Matthew Goodwin, academic rigour & polemic
Matthew Goodwin was Professor of Politics at Kent University but took a pay off in 2024.
Since then he has become a presenter on GB News and was the losing Reform candidate in the recent Gorton and Denton By-Election.
Goodwin is the author of several best selling books and he did have a contract with Penguin. However his most volume is self-published. It has been criticised for a number of inaccuracies including misleading quotations which appear to have been picked up from ChatGPT but not properly checked.
Perhaps at the root of the issue is whether Goodwin should still be regarded as an academic or if he is now a polemicist, a rather different thing.
As the long time convenor of the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, I try to keep a firm hold on academic rigour. The seminar is mostly focused on new research and we are interested in the research process.
One key indicator here is that when questions are asked they should not be ones to which the answer is already known (this works well in union negotiations but not in research). The research process may discover expected answers of course, but equally and more importantly it may discover unexpected results. These may well suggest a rethink to the premises of the research.
Matt Goodwin in 2026 seems to be in the game of knowing the answers first and then providing the research to prove it. There is nothing wrong with this as such but its polemic, stating an opinion, rather than something based on facts, however awkward the facts may on occasion be.
I’m a fan of polemics and sharp arguments and they can have their place in the seminar room provided its clear that is what they are and not original research. Sometimes of course the two can co-exist but I’m not sure Matt Goodwin is in that place currently.
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