Leading pollster and political commentator Matt Goodwin has set out his analysis on why Nigel Farage is enjoying more success than ever before.
The Reform UK leader became an MP for the first time at this year’s General Election by convincingly winning the seat of Clacton.
The success didn’t end there for the GB News star as his party won five seats, a particularly impressive feat given how the First Past the Post system tends not to favour smaller parties.
Speaking to Steve Edginton, Goodwin said the British public are not being listened to with their concerns on immigration, and are often being tarnished instead.
Matt Goodwin says Farage is doing better than ever
GB NEWS
“We are entering a sort of low trust, declining, divided society with high rates of segregation”, he said.
“If you do express a voice and express concern, you are wrapped up with the very sort of fringe minority of far-right loons and branded as far-right.
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“I work in the academic literature on this. I’m very aware of what has happened. The term far-right, which most academics used to say was meaningless, has been inflated to include people who aren’t far-right at all.
“We are asking questions like, ‘is mass immigration sustainable? Is integration working?
“Why is it that we have Sharia courts operating in the UK? Is Islam compatible with Western liberal society?’
“The far-right has been expanded, inflated as a term to encompass a lot of those people. I think that is what is fuelling a lot of this division in British society.
Matt Goodwin joined Steve Edginton on GB Newss
GB NEWS
“That’s why Nigel Farage is doing better than ever. People are looking for a voice within that conversation, a voice that they don’t have when they look at the established political parties. I think those parties now have an option, right?”
It comes after unrest across the country where those taking part in riots were widely branded “far-right”.
Nigel Farage waded in on the chaos to condemn any violence, while also hitting out at Keir Starmer’s response.
He also questioned “whether the truth is being withheld from us” after the killing of three girls in Southport, which sparked the chaos.
Riots broke out in the UK Getty The political class has rushed to condemn Farage with Tory leadership contenders Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat among them.
The latter fumed at his “reckless rhetoric” in his first major speech since declaring his bid to head the party.
“We need to end the culture of denial – the tendency to move hurriedly on from acts of extreme violence, to obfuscate about the identities and motives of the perpetrators”, he said.