Matt Goodwin's Substack- 10/11/24
Hurrah! We’ve just climbed to Number 4 in the Substack World Politics leaderboard which means we’re probably the most read Substack in the UK and among the most read in the World.
While we now have 61,000 readers, many more people are reading us each month, with around 1-2 million clicks every month.
But why? What explains our success?
I think the answer has a lot to do with the remarkable and historic events this week which much of the legacy media, the elite class, and the established Groupthink, once again, largely failed to see coming.
The remarkable comeback of Donald Trump, the continuation and expansion of the underlying realignment of Western politics—which I first pointed to a decade ago— and the diversification of Trump’s coalition have all caught the elite class off guard.
As I said in a speech this week, much of it has taken me back to 2016 when such was the shock over Trump’s first victory that Hillary Clinton was even forced to sit down and engage in self-therapy by writing a book titled “What Happened?”
And when I got to the end of the book I realised that neither Clinton nor much of the liberal establishment understood what had just happened.
It’s been the same this week.
Liberal insider columnists who like to think they represent the nations that surround them suddenly realising they do not know their nations at all.
And so they’ve been flailing around, much like 2016, variously blaming Trump’s win on Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the pollsters, voters, right-wing media, Trump, racism, and basically anything and everything except themselves.
Not once have they bothered to stop and think:
“Maybe it’s us. Maybe it’s the extreme and disastrous policies we’ve been jamming down people’s throats despite them asking for a change of direction in 2016 —like record immigration, broken borders, soft-on-crime policies, a model of globalisation that has completely smashed working-class men to pieces, a woke mind virus that led grown adults to tell little boys they can become little girls and little girls they can become little boys, and efforts to shut down free speech”
And so, nearly a decade on from 2016, everybody is now asking: how could the liberal establishment and its allies in the institutions get this so wrong —again?
But not us.
Unlike many others in the legacy media, the broken institutions, the expert class, and the national conversation, we consistently got this one right.
From the very start, we said Kamala Harris would be a total disaster.
From the very start, while the legacy media was buying into bizarre narratives about an apparent “surge” of support for Harris, “joy” and “bratness”, we were pointing to why she was in serious trouble, failing to connect with the right groups.
While everybody else was falling over themselves to berate Trump as a Nazi and fascist, laughing at his rallies and allies, calling his supporters “garbage”, claiming that a surge of support among women meant that Trump would have no chance (this is my absolute favourite!) and that independent voters were moving behind Harris, we bucked the trend by explaining why Trump was heading for a landslide.
Long before anybody was talking about the realignment, we explained why Trump was about to mobilise it, leaning into key groups of voters while mobilising higher levels of support among what have now become key groups for Trump —Hispanic and Latino men and smaller but still significant numbers of African Americans.
And while British conservatives such as new Spectator editor Michael Gove, among others, sided with Kamala Harris (HOW can a conservative endorse Harris???) we explained why Trump, unlike the hapless Tories, is much more in tune with today’s cultural zeitgeist and political landscape. Instead of distancing themselves from Trump, conservatives around the world should learn from him.
And long before people finally realised that men, particularly young men, have moved decisively rightwards, embracing Trump, we were pointing to this trend, with our columnist Anonymous Zoomer explaining why so many men are so pro-Trump.
In short, we got this right. From the very start.
Much like we got a lot of other things right.
Like explaining why Rishi Sunak would be a total disaster for the British Tories.
Like explaining why Nigel Farage would stand and Reform would surge.
Like explaining why the British Tories were about to collapse.
Like explaining why national populism in not only America but across the Western world, from Germany to France, Austria to the Netherlands, is here to stay.
Like explaining why Keir Starmer’s Labour government would quickly become one of the most unpopular governments in recent history.
And like explaining why Labour’s plan for stopping the small boats wouldn’t work, long before they even took office and began gaslighting the British people.
This, in short, is why we’re now one of the biggest Substacks in the UK, if not THE biggest, read by more people than the likes of Dominic Cummings and just as many people as many well-known established publications.
Because people aren’t stupid.
They can see they’re being lied to and misled by many of the established institutions.
They can see they’re being fed “officially approved narratives” that reflect the values, the priorities, the beliefs, the expectations of an elite minority but which are woefully out of touch with the views of the Forgotten Majority.
And they can see that what we like to think of as the “public square” or the “national conversation” have now been whittled down and restricted to such an extent that they contain no serious diversity of opinions and beliefs.
This, this right here, is why so many people are abandoning the legacy media, the failed institutions, the broken narratives, and the biased gatekeepers.
So, consider doing me one favour in the aftermath of this historic week and what has been another great run for this much talked-about community of ours.
Consider forwarding this e-mail to a few friends, relatives or colleagues in your e-mail contacts so they too can join a community that might not be the most popular among the liberal establishment (!) but which has consistently been ahead of the curve and shown itself to be much closer to the average person on the street than legacy media.
They might not agree with everything that I write but they might, after the return of Trump and similar revolts brewing in the UK and across Europe, appreciate now more than ever the critical importance of having a diversity of views in their inbox.
And if you are one of those people who have been forwarded this Substack then do consider subscribing and getting all our content. You don’t have to agree with me on everything to agree that we should all be reading things that challenge our priors, assumptions, and beliefs —especially publications that tend to get things right.
My thanks in advance, Matt
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