As The Guardian noted last night:
Reform UK's candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection has been accused of wanting a “Handmaid's Tale future” after unearthed YouTube footage revealed he called for “young girls and women” to be given a “biological reality” check.
They added:
In a clip posted to his personal YouTube channel in November 2024, Matt Goodwin stated that “many women in Britain are having children much too late in life”.
He said: “We need to also explain to young girls and women the biological reality of this crisis. Many women in Britain are having children much too late in life and they would prefer to have children much earlier on.”
Let's be clear about this: there is nothing surprising about what Matt Goodwin had to say. This is typical far-right thinking. All that has happened is that it is getting some exposure. Let me, however, summarise what is going on.
Firstly, far-right parties, like Reform, hate women. Even though they have women in their ranks, their attitude is that the role of the woman is within the home, that women must defer to men's opinions, and that maybe, even, they should be denied the right to vote, which is something which we are seeing said by members of the Trump administration. To be clear, these parties think that men have a right to rule, both the country and the home, and that women who challenge this are a threat. There is deep-seated misogyny implicit in everything that these parties do. Let's not beat around the bush.
Second, this idea that young women (and let's be clear, what Matt Goodwin really means is white young women) should be having more children is also deeply racist. The far right has an idea that the white population of the UK is being replaced by people from a wider range of ethnic backgrounds because the birth rate amongst what they say is the ethnic British population is declining rapidly, but it is not declining so markedly amongst first and second-generation migrants. Proportionately, that population is growing as a consequence. This trend, and the hatred of it, is described by what they call the great replacement theory, which is key to the politics of hate and division that Reform depends upon creating.
Third, what all this confirms is that Reform is what I've always suggested it to be. Firstly, it is racist. Secondly, it is misogynistic. Thirdly, it is from the far right: these two things are characteristic of that political alignment. Fourthly, it is seeking to promote a white, male elite who will run the UK as a result. That is its political philosophy, and unless you are part of this white, male and, incidentally, faux-Christian elite, then they have nothing to offer you except their hate.
That, in summary, is everything you need to know about them.
That, too, is why we need a politics for people that delivers a politics of care and an economics of hope.
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It is wise to remember just how many Nazis and in the Einstazgruppen at the Nuremberg trials had doctorates – even double doctorates in some cases.
In one sense, it is hard to take him seriously – it must have been been really difficult being at the University of K**t being a randy professor with all those good looking, talented young women around him whom he wants to dominate.
OTOH, there is nothing worse these days than using the language of the truly oppressed to create and support artificially oppressed groups.
He is someone whom if I met him I’d be more likely to give a firm handshake to his nether regions that to his hand – which if he and his fellow right wing tossers are not careful, could be covered in blood one day given the unpredictable forces they have chosen to play with.
He is a very bad man.