Matthew Goodwin
speaker
155 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Matthew Goodwin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
I just want to mention a few names, Lucy Lowe, Victoria Goglia, Charlene Downs. Everyone around the world has heard of George Floyd. Nobody's heard those names. These are girls who were murdered when they were 12, 13, 14 years of age. Like you, I'm a father. I find this absolutely despicable. And even when, in some of these cases, even when fathers in desperation were
were trying to get their daughters back, were trying to save their daughters from these gangs. They were then arrested. They were then told that they were breaking the law. So every aspect of this scandal is utterly hideous. And the fact that our Labour government
which has announced 25 national inquiries for other issues, cannot bring itself to launch an inquiry this time around, also tells you a lot. It tells you that Labour is scared about the scale of this crisis. It tells you that Labour officials are probably implicated in this crisis. And we do know that some Labour officials have been implicated in this crisis in local towns in England.
It tells you that this crisis probably goes much deeper within the state than we currently are being led to believe. And it tells you again that because the victims are white working class girls...
that within the matrix of social justice ideology, which dominates many of the public sector institutions, they are simply not seen as being fashionable or important enough to warrant the same level of attention and concern that other groups in our society receive.
Yeah, I think there's a lot to do with that.
So I've always found Tommy Robinson interesting for a number of reasons. We're a similar age. He grew up in Luton, which is very close to the town. I grew up on the outskirts of somewhere called St. Albans. He reminds me of lots of the guys I grew up with. I don't want to make it too personal. My background was somewhat similar, not stable, certainly wasn't middle class.
And so when I saw him first break through in 2009, 2010, drawing attention to this issue, I sort of understood where he was coming from and the anger and the frustration that was driving that. Now, where I departed from Robinson is that I felt at the time
that being so provocative, and this was between 2009 and 2013-14, with his movement, the English Defence League, by being so provocative on the streets, I felt that he was playing into the hands of the state, that he was becoming useful for the state, which was then saying, well, if you talk about these issues, you're like these guys. And I think he's obviously been on a journey.
He's not the same person today that he was then. But I think the reality of Tommy Robinson is that he would not have become a prominent, significant figure in our national political life, which he is. Were it not for the sustained failures of the British state to deal with the issues that he has been campaigning on, had they taken this issue seriously? Had they investigated the rumors?
Had they looked at the rise of radical Islamism as well, particularly within India? some of the communities that Robinson knows very well, then he wouldn't have become a significant figure. So he certainly gave voice to some of the issues that were being ignored, as did, by the way, a few other people at the time, some renegade journalists and so on.
But I think at the same time, though, and this is a It's a sensitive conversation because I think everybody who cares about this issue cares very strongly about it, right? My view is that the only way we can change Western societies today, we can save Western civilization, we can reassert the values that we care about, is through the ballot box. That's my view.
That the only way forward is by appealing to a majority of concerned citizens by bringing together a broad coalition of people who say, actually, enough is enough. I'm not going to have this project imposed on me anymore. I'm not going to support mass uncontrolled immigration. I'm not going to be told that little boys can become little girls and little girls can become little boys.
I'm not going to see my country, my home be denigrated in this way. I want to push back through the ballot box. And to me, that's the only viable, alternative, plausible way forward. It's not to say that I think these people are wrong to be highlighting these issues. But I think if you're serious about bringing about change, changing things, changing policy, changing government.
I think the ballot box is the way forward. I don't think Britain has the same culture as France, Italy, and other countries whereby street protest is embraced or supported. I think we have a very distinctive political culture in this country, which social scientists have talked about from the 50s onward. We have a civic culture.
We're very skeptical of anything that might look like it's aggressive, anything that might look like it's challenging the rule of law. And I think ultimately, it's about what approach do you think is really the most viable way to bring about change?
I mean... Let me just put it a different way. I think path dependency really matters in politics. I think where you start determines your eventual destination. So if you start...
with a movement that's very combative, provocative, that is associated with, you know, rightly or wrongly, it was associated with drinking and conflict and fighting with cops and whatever, it's just going to be very difficult for you to change the public perception, right? From where you start basically determines your eventual destination.
Now, what I'm interested in, I'm interested in movements that are winning 30, 40% of the national vote, as in, I want to get things done. I want to do what Trump's doing in the U.S., I want to come in and say, right, we're slashing the state. We're getting rid of DEI. We're ending mass uncontrolled immigration. We're going to have a serious strategy for integration, right?
We're going to push back on net zero. I'm interested in that. I'm not interested in a purity spiral over on the corner here as to, you know, who's been talking about this issue for the longest period of time. I respect people who are ahead of the curve on issues like that, but I'm ultimately interested in how do you actually save a country? What's the most viable way of doing that?
Showing 101–120 of 155 · page 6 of 8
← Previous
Next →