Matthew Goodwin is an academic, writer and speaker known for his work on political volatility, risk, populism, British politics, Europe, elections and Brexit.
Sometimes, what matters in politics is how one issue merges with another to produce an explosive reaction. In the 2010s, it was the fusion of immigration with the European Union which collided to pave the way for Nigel Farage, Brexit, and then Boris Johnson, dramatically expanding the amount of space for these populist revolts. But
Boris Johnson, so the joke goes, will always be remembered as the third prime minister to have been brought down by…Boris Johnson. After bringing down his old rival David Cameron by campaigning for Brexit, and then helping to bring down Theresa May by campaigning against her soft Brexit, Johnson then set the stage for his
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Matthew Goodwin, author of the bestseller Values, Voice and Virtue talks to Winston about the divide in British politics between cosmopolitans and traditionalists, the controversy surrounding the National Conservative Conference, and the future of the Conservative and Labour parties.
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The coronation will commemorate the start of a new era, but what will this mean for the United Kingdom? How will Charles III secure his place in history – and what kind of monarch will he be? From pageantry to the polls: will the coronation distract voters from the Tories’ predicted heavy losses in the
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Is the government using mass immigration to mask failures in the welfare system? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Matthew Goodwin, author of Values, Voice and Virtue.
A creeping sense of Bregret is taking hold in Britain. A majority of Brits now say that the vote for Britain leaving the EU was a mistake. Only one in five think Brexit is going well – and seven in ten say that it has gone as badly, or worse, than they feared. In the
Britain has lost control of its borders. Over the last four years, the number of asylum-seekers and illegal migrants who have arrived unlawfully in Britain in small boats, after passing through safe countries, has rocketed from just 299 to nearly 40,000. This year, so far, the number of people crossing the Channel each month has surged from
In the aftermath of Trussfall, amid the victory of the lettuce, the Conservative party has today crashed to just 14 per cent in the polls. This is the party’s lowest level of support in British polling history. The previous low, 17 per cent, was recorded during the Brexit meltdown in the spring of 2019, amid
The wheels are coming off the Conservative party. In recent days, in the polls, the party averaged just 31 per cent of the national vote. This is John Major in 1997 territory, or William Hague in 2001, both of whom were humiliated at the ballot box. Britain’s governing party is now in the fast lane toward
Boris Johnson enters the third year of his premiership in a much weaker position than when he started it. Alongside major rebellions inside his own party, humiliating by-election defeats and growing speculation across Westminster about who will succeed him, he has another problem: the coalition of voters who propelled him into Number 10 Downing Street
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While the government’s U-turn on A-level and GCSE results has been widely welcomed, universities are still in a dire state – why? (00:55) Plus, has Boris Johnson got the right approach in his war on fat? (15:00) And finally, are illegal raves during the pandemic socially irresponsible, or just young people sticking it to The
The Conservative party is no longer the party of the rich, while the Labour party is no longer the party of the poor. That is the central finding of my new report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). Boris Johnson is certainly a prime minister under pressure. Public disapproval of his government is drifting upwards.
Politicians, said the historian A.J.P. Taylor, do not create the current of events. They can only float along with them and try to steer. But he was talking about the long contours of European history, not the sudden and shocking arrival of a global pandemic. How to float along and steer through something that looks
Have we reached peak populism? This is the question being asked after a recent regional election in Italy delivered a setback to Matteo Salvini, the de facto head of Europe’s populist family. In the affluent and historically left-wing region of Emilia Romagna, Salvini’s right-wing alliance finished more than seven points behind the Left. It wasn’t
The 2019 general election will be remembered as one of the most consequential elections in Britain’s recent history. Aside from rejecting a more economically radical Labour Party, the British people used the election to provide what their elected representatives had been unable to provide: an answer to Brexit. For Boris Johnson and the Conservative party, the election
The fate of Boris Johnson’s premiership will be determined by Nigel Farage and the Brexit party. Even if a Brexit deal can be agreed, another extension to the deadline of 31 October still seems possible. If the can is kicked down the road, the question of how Farage’s voters will react is key. Without the support
Few things can kill the Christmas spirit as effectively as news about rail fare rises. This was demonstrated again this week as an annual announcement, which feels more predictable than some of my local trains, revealed that the average cost of tickets is up 3.1 per cent. The news has already generated countless vox pops
A fellow academic once said that working at a university is one of only a few places where you grow older while everyone around you stays the same age. It was this remark that occupied my mind this week as I trundled through campus, smiling and greeting our ever-younger-looking first-year undergraduates. The whole idea of
The UK Independence Party might be about to make a comeback. Ever since Theresa May’s Chequers deal on Brexit, which went down very badly indeed among grassroots Conservatives and Leavers, the opinion polls have been kind to the Purple Army. The week after the Chequers deal went public, one pollster found support for the party
What has led to the rise of populism? The conventional answer involves inequality, flattening wages – and general economic malaise. In Europe, one year after the vote for Brexit, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times claimed that the global financial crisis had ‘opened the door to a populist surge’. In America, thousands rushed out to
