In the second part of my Monologue for Democracy for This Time Tomorrow, I want to talk about Matt Goodwin and the speech he gave at Reform UK’s conference in Cornwall on February 24.
The reason I want to talk about Goodwin is because he appeared in my YouTube feed, and if he’s appearing in my Youtube feed then chances are he’s also appearing in the Youtube feeds of other UK-based men between the ages of 20-40.
Why does that matter?
Because before he went on stage to deliver his speech at the conference, Goodwin was introduced as someone who defeats his opponents with pure facts and statistics.
# Sound clip from Matt Goodwin’s speech at the Reform UK’s conference in Cornwall [YouTube, Matt Goodwin, “I Want My Country Back…”] #
However, as far as I’m concerned, facts and stats are a lot less important to Goodwin than feelings, and right now, feelings are more important to talk about than stats.
# Intro music #
While I wasn’t overly familiar with Goodwin before I listened to his speech, I did know of him through Substack. I had followed him there last year back when I was looking to inundate myself with right-wing populist content, and I remember finding his material persuasive due to how it tended to combine incendiary language with a preference for listing. Simply put, I found Goodwin to be an effective communicator, but in the sense that he made me feel threatened in a way I had not felt previously. Much like a horror film might make me look for ghosts under the bed for a few weeks, Goodwin’s writing made me wonder if perhaps I should treat myself, a foreigner in this country, with a healthy dose of skepticism and fearful apprehension.
A quick look at Goodwin’s Substack as I’m writing this monologue appears to confirm my past impression. His most recent Note, which describes his most recent article, says: “NEW POST. Why universities in the West are dying. The diversity obsession, bad managers and ideological extremists are killing campus.” You get the idea. It’s the stuff of big feelings—especially fear.
Goodwin’s speech at the Cornwall conference alarmed me because much of it seemed inspired by the American context, and there are good reasons why we in the UK should be wary of anything that seems lifted from the Americans right now. It’s possible I’ve just missed that this is how supporters and associates of Reform UK talk these days, but Goodwin’s repeated use of the phrase “I want my country back” and then painting immigrants as murderers and rapists, and the politicians who allowed them in, as the people who took his country away from him seems a little more MAGA than I’ve become used to.
# Sound clip from Matt Goodwin’s speech at the Reform UK’s conference in Cornwall [YouTube, Matt Goodwin, “I Want My Country Back…”] #
Indeed, it seemed a little like something Steven Bannon, the subject of my previous monologue, could’ve written. Bannon often advises his audience to “see what you see”—to trust what their own eyes says about their reality—while at the same time priming his viewers and listeners to see what he thinks they should be seeing and how they should feel about it.
Now, should Brits really be asking for their country back? Who’s taken it from them? And why…?
If you’ve never asked yourself those questions before, then chances are you’ve never pondered the answers to them either, because why should you have?
Are these good and pertinent questions, or is the person asking them simply trying to shape your reality for you?
Goodwin says in his speech that he believes in British identity, history and collective memory, and in the place built by his parents and their parents and so on.
# Sound clip from Matt Goodwin’s speech at the Reform UK’s conference in Cornwall [YouTube, Matt Goodwin, “I Want My Country Back…”] #
But then he says that the people in power, the political class—presumably people like Keir Starmer, an Englishman who grew up in Oxted—do not believe in this, and that they’re actually destroying it.
# Sound clip from Matt Goodwin’s speech at the Reform UK’s conference in Cornwall [YouTube, Matt Goodwin, “I Want My Country Back…”] #
Goodwin says, “we can feel it and sense it”—the elite minority does not care what the forgotten majority thinks. The elite minority is big on everything except the British people, and they’re especially big on immigrants.
Goodwin goes on to suggest that these immigrants that the minority elite favour over British people apparently do the jobs that six million out of work British people could do, and they also hate British people and the British way of life, and they’re also more likely to commit crime and, interestingly, take more money out of the system than they put in, even though they also, as said, take jobs from out of work Brits…
# Sound clip from Matt Goodwin’s speech at the Reform UK’s conference in Cornwall [YouTube, Matt Goodwin, “I Want My Country Back…”] #
Goodwin goes on for about eighteen minutes or so, and I could carry on relaying the ways in which he seems to believe that dangerous immigrants, DEI and foreign aid betrays British taxpayers while making Britain less safe, but I don’t want to do that because that would lead me down a road where I start comparing Goodwin’s facts and stats with mine, and that’s not what this monologue is about.
Statistical information are not merely objective facts—they are shaped by context, audience and the speaker’s goals. For example, I would rather be told that exercising is good for my health than be told that not exercising could shorten my life. And so if I wanted to scare you about the threat posed by asylum seekers, I might pick a piece of statistical information that suits my objective and, well… you go figure the rest.
So, I’m not going to say that Goodwin is wrong. You can listen to his full speech on YouTube and that way you can make up your own mind.
Instead I’m just going to ask you to do something.
I’m going to ask you to do exactly what Bannon says. I’m going to ask you to see what you see.
And then I’m going to ask you if the Britain you see when you look out your window really is the same place that Goodwin describes. If the Britain you see isn’t one where people actually get along with one another—from the pubs to the cafes to the corner shops, from the workplace to the post office queue to your very own street— regardless of where they come from. If it isn’t indeed a place where most people, regardless of where they were born, are outraged by the same things, and want the same things for themselves and their children, and if it isn’t a place where people feel pride over their collective resilience and fortitude, and their nation’s ability to persevere through times of hardship, even when the odds are looking quite bad.
I don’t know if Goodwin is even a member of Reform UK, but he sure has the air of a future party leader. He has the polished looks of a quarter zip City banker, he’s a highly articulate academic, and to boot, ostensibly quite willing to go further on inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric than Nigel Farage. And now he’s telling you that he wants his country back. He wants you to feel that. He wants you to be scared that someone is trying to take your home away from you.
Is that stats and pure fact?
Or is it really the opposite?
# Sound clip from Matt Goodwin’s speech at the Reform UK’s conference in Cornwall [YouTube, Matt Goodwin, “I Want My Country Back…”] #
See what you see.
See what’s right in front of you.
Ted Verver-Greijer is the co-creator and producer of the podcast, “This Time Tomorrow.”
