As he stood onstage at London's Chatham House in March 2012 Matthew Goodwin attempted to explain the motivations of those who supported the far-right.
"This is foremost about a feeling that a way of life, a national culture, a set of values, even if people can't quite explain what those values are, are somehow threatened, whether by immigration, whether by rising diversity," he told the audience at the renowned research institute.
"And what I don't think we've quite got to grips with yet is just how important anti-Muslim prejudice is now to these parties. It's absolutely key to their narrative."
At the time Mr Goodwin was an associate professor of politics at Nottingham University and was building a reputation as one of the UK's leading experts on the far-right. He would go on to write several books and articles on the BNP and organisations such as the English Defence League.
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His 2015 book Revolt on the Right, co-authored with respected University of Manchester professor Rob Ford was named political book of the year, he served as an advisor to the government on tackling anti-Muslim hatred, produced studies for anti-racism organisation Hope Not Hate and wrote articles for The Guardian denouncing Islamophobia.
Fast forward to 2026 and Mr Goodwin, having been announced as the Reform UK candidate in the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election, is still focussing on the values of those who feel their 'way of life' is under threat. Only now it's the would-be MP who, according to his critics and political opponents, is flirting with extremism.
The 44-year-old was brought up in St Albans in Hertfordshire. In a 2020 Daily Mail article, he described growing up in a 'single-parent, working-class family where money was always a problem' after his father, then said to have been a senior NHS boss in Greater Manchester, left.
On leaving school, he enrolled at university in Salford, graduating in 2003 with a first class honours degree in politics and contemporary history before embarking on a career in academia, first at Manchester University then Nottingham.
While studying for a PHD at Bath University he wrote his thesis on the BNP, interviewing senior figures in the neo-Nazi movement. Mr Goodwin left academia in the summer of 2024 when he took redundancy as a professor at the University of Kent.
He is now a GB News presenter with a profile on the Substack publishing app that boasts 90,000 subscribers.
After announcing he would be standing in Gorton and Denton, Mr Goodwin has made much of his links to Greater Manchester. In a post on his Substack headlined 'Why I'm standing' he shared a picture of himself outside his grandfather's old home in Salford and recalled childhood visits after his parents split.
"Visiting my grandad's house yesterday was emotional," he wrote. "I thought how lost and confused I felt at that time. And now here I am standing for Parliament. Not only the first person in my family to go to university, but actually standing for Parliament!"
Replying to a post on X by journalist Owen Jones last week, he said he 'spent my weekends and holidays in Manchester', had worked in Burnage, Didsbury, and Withington and lived in Castlefield. "I didn't parachute into Manchester — this place made me," he added.
But it's Mr Goodwin's political views that are coming under the fiercest scrutiny. Last year he was criticised when he seemed to suggest that people from minority ethnic backgrounds who are born in the UK are not necessarily British.
In a series of posts on X, Mr Goodwin said the mass stabbing on a train in Huntingdon was due to 'mass uncontrolled immigration'. When it was pointed out that the attacker was born in Britain, he replied: "So were all of the 7/7 bombers. It takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody 'British'."
In a Substack article on August 1, 2024, following the unrest that came in the wake of the Southport stabbings, he asked 'What did you expect? adding: "These protestors are being widely criticised by much of the media and political class as 'far right agitators', 'violent thugs', and 'extremists' who have been swayed by 'misinformation', 'disinformation', and irresponsible 'populists'.
"And I certainly have no doubt there will be violent thugs among them. I will say again —violence against police is never justified. But here's my question. What did you expect? Seriously?"
In another Substack article on January 23 this year he wrote Donald Trump 'was right' to claim parts of Europe are now 'unrecognisable' and said major cities were undergoing 'demographic rupture'.
"Not through organic evolution, but through sustained, high-volume migration imposed from above, without democratic consent and without any serious plan for assimilation," he added. As part of figures used to illustrate his claim, he said 'the foreign born already represent a third of Manchester' and said research had suggested that by 2050, 17 per cent of the UK population would be Muslim 'not through conquest, but through choices made by elites who never asked the public for consent'.
And in a post on X in August he said the next election would present a opportunity to 'overhaul the post-war asylum system' and debate how to 'bring about mass deportations'.
Those views appear to enamoured him to the types of groups he once dedicated his career to studying. After news of Mr Goodwin's candidacy broke last Friday far-right activist Tommy Robinson posted on X: "Vote Matt."
But it's all a far cry from some of Mr Goodwin's earlier stated opinions. In a 2012 episode of the BBC programme The Big Questions, during a discussion about the EDL and Tommy Robinson, Mr Goodwin could be heard railing against the racist stereotyping of Muslims. "The vast majority of Muslims do not endorse terrorism or suicide bombers," he said. "The vast majority of Muslims feel strongly attached to their country and to their neighbourhood."
And in a column in the Guardian in 2013 he again defended Muslims against the 'bankrupt idea that Islamophobia is not an issue' adding: "One problem we face are unhelpful opinion polls, which either attempt to show how many Muslims sympathise with terrorists, or how non-Muslims don't like Muslims. They might be driven by good intentions but often inflame tensions and provide new ammunition to extremists."
So what's behind Goodwin's shift to the right? One source, familiar with the professor-turned TV presenter and his career, described the move as a 'common enough story'.
They said: "Plenty of people find an audience in the far-right, a platform which they didn't have prior to their engagement in the far-right, and I think that is true for him. It's a lucrative decision. It's undemanding and it is flattering."
Hope Not Hate, described Mr Goodwin as having gone from being 'a serious academic working to understand the drivers of far-right extremism' to 'one of the most effective radical-right figures in the UK'.
"His background as a serious academic on the far right has led him to essentially reverse-engineer his own research to build a career as a radical right influencer," said Joe Mulhall, HNH's director of research.
Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell, Labour’s Deputy Leader, said Mr Goodwin 'represents the kind of politics that will drive a wedge between communities in Manchester'. She added: "Reform have misjudged the mood around Manchester and they won’t put the priorities of working people first. They just offer division, animosity, and hatred – not the unity and pride which our city stands for."
But the Reform candidate has rejected those claims. "Most people on the left want you to think that I am a bad person with divisive views," he wrote on his Substack. "But it's not true.
"I just want to live in a country where people like my grandparents are treated with decency and respect. Where people who work hard, play by the rules and contribute to our country are put first - where they belong. This should not be controversial."