We hope that this article – the original of which can be found here https://substack.com/@mattgoodwin – will stimulate a debate as to whether Professor Goodwin is correct or has misjudged (or even misrepresented) the current issue.  He makes some interesting buts, but we wonder if he’s used the wrong material to make a case against mass-immigration?

I AM ANGRY. I am upset. And I am deeply disillusioned with the direction of Britain.

I’m writing this post after a horrific mass stabbing at a children’s dance group in the town of Southport, which left three children dead and another eight injured.

These poor children thought they were going to a Taylor Swift themed dance class; they ended up being murdered.

And who murdered them?

The son of immigrants from Rwanda.

I’ve thought about many things since.

But the one thought that keeps coming back to me is this.

When a nation cannot protect its own children something has gone terribly wrong.

And something has gone terribly wrong in this country.

We can all see it, we can all sense it, even if we dare not say it out loud.

The creeping sense of lawlessness.

The overwhelming sense of hopelessness.

The now inescapable conclusion that we’ve simply let too many people into our country who hate who we are.

And a growing sense of desperation, rooted in the knowledge that nobody in power has any serious control over the country —over its streets, borders, future.

This is why many ordinary people are now taking to the streets to vent their anger and frustration over not only the senseless murder of children but over the general direction of the country, with some — wrongly in my view — taking this anger out on police officers and emergency service workers.

In response, 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?

What do you expect ordinary British people to do given the deeply alarming things that are now unfolding around them, in their country, on a daily basis?

Just look at what’s unfolded in the last month alone.

On July 4th, at the election, several Muslim MPs were elected to the House of Commons after a campaign of abuse, harassment, and intimidation, displaying zero respect for our political institutions and ways of life. (1)

On July 11th, the new Labour government announced it would release 5,000 prisoners early in September, with most having served 40% of their sentence.

On July 15th, we learned London’s Metropolitan Police had not solved a SINGLE petty crime -burglary, car theft, phone theft – in three years, across 166 areas.

On July 17th, it was reported that a Jordanian refugee, Mustafa al Mbaidan, who had assaulted a female police officer in Bournemouth, was spared community service on the grounds that he cannot speak English.

On July 18th, two asylum seekers, Yousef Garef and Amin Abdelbakar, who stole a Rolex worth £25,000 from a tourist, were spared jail.

On July 18th, that same day, mass rioting in minority communities broke out in Harehills after social services took four Romani children into social care.

On the same evening, rioting broke out in East London’s Bangladeshi community, following political unrest in Bangladesh, with rocks thrown at police officers and cars smashed in communities that are majority Muslim.

On July 23rd, it was announced that Anjem Choudary, Britain’s most famous Islamist, was to be sentenced for directing Islamist terror on Britain’s streets.

On the same day, a British Army Officer was repeatedly stabbed outside his home by Anthony Esan, a member of a minority community.

On July 26th, protests broke out after footage emerged of Greater Manchester Police taking action against Fahir and Amaad Amaas —two brothers who were later revealed to have severely assaulted armed officers.

On July 27th, six arrests were made after a drive-by shooting in the town of Watford.

On July 29th, reports emerged that a man had been stabbed to death, with two others injured, following a knife fight in a park in East London.

On the same day, there was the mass stabbing and murder of children in Southport.

On July 30th, a mass brawl involving machetes erupted on the streets of Southend.

On the same day, it was reported that a homeless Kurdish migrant had pushed a man onto the tracks at a London Underground station after feeling ‘disrespected’.

And, also on the same day, it was reported that another 3,000 migrants have entered Britain illegally on small boats since Labour took power less than a month ago, taking the total number of crossings by mainly young male migrants from countries like Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, and Syria to around 130,000.

What do you expect?

When we see individual stories like this, in isolation, there is a very real risk that we become desensitised and accustomed to them.

It becomes the ‘new normal’.

It’s a classic case of boiling the frog.

If you want to boil a frog in hot water, as the saying goes, then start by turning the temperature up slowly. Get it right, and the frog won’t even notice it’s getting boiled.

But when you see all these stories together, side by side, the sheer scale of the lawlessness, the chaos, the breakdown of social order, and the glaring loss of control becomes impossible to ignore.

And all this against the backdrop of many other things that reflect the fact that the country is not really a country that we recognise anymore.

A string of Islamist terrorist attacks.

The murder of an MP, police officer and soldier by radicalised Islamists.

The mass grooming (2) of young white girls by Muslim gangs up and down the country.

The imposition of mass immigration. (3)

The total collapse of our borders. (4)

The rise of double-standard policing, where ever since October 7th radicals and extremists who hate who we are, who hate the West, (5) have been allowed to parade up and down the country while anybody from the white working-class who dares to do the same is automatically branded a ‘far right extremist’.

Again, what do you expect?

But now, amidst a new ruling class (6) that can no longer tolerate any criticism of the elite consensus, they either pass us by or are reframed so that the ‘real’ story is never actually about the real story.

It’s about ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’, ‘populism’, ‘racism’, or anything other than the actual cause.

And in the days ahead, after Southport, we will watch this playbook unfold again.

As after the Manchester Arena bombings and the murder of Sir David Amess, when atrocities committed by outsiders were ridiculously repackaged as warnings to ‘not look back in anger’ and ‘be kind on social media’, the national conversation will be managed and steered to focus on everything and anything except what this is about.

We will hear platitudes about diversity being our greatest strength.

We will be told to be kind and come together, to not look back in anger.

We will read about people joining together to clean up streets.

And we will be told that millions of our fellow citizens, the ones who are protesting, the ones who have had enough, do not represent the ‘real Britain’ or ‘our values’.

But whose values are we talking about, exactly?

Whose values are imposing mass immigration, segregation, communalism, and a broken model of multiculturalism on the rest of the country?

Whose values are eroding free speech, silencing dissent, and stigmatising everybody and anybody who does not rally behind this broken elite consensus?

Whose values are seemingly fine with having no serious control over our own national borders while asking the British people to pay billions for this disaster?

The values of an elite minority.

The values of no more than 15% of the country.

An elite minority that is now visibly losing control of the country and which, in the era of Twitter/X, YouTube, Substacks, and new media, is now also struggling to maintain its dominance over the national conversation.

This is exactly why – as I said last night (7) – millions of Brits feel so concerned about what is unfolding around them. It’s not just about the issues; it’s their growing awareness that the new ruling class has no serious interest in changing direction.

We are now all stuck in the same car, with the doors locked, hurtling toward a cliff-edge with the hands of an irresponsible, unpredictable radical on the steering wheel.

This is why many people feel they are losing their country –their identity, values, rule of law, ways of life, and can seemingly do nothing about it.

To make matters worse, they cannot voice their concerns because, if they do, they too will be branded ‘far right’, ‘racist’, and ‘misinformed’.

Join a protest in your capital city to flag your concerns about what’s happening? That’s far right. Protest after the murder of children? Far right.

In today’s world, where terms like ‘far right’ have been massively expanded by radical progressives to enforce groupthink and stigmatise anybody who does not get on board with the values of an elite minority, it is quicker to list the things that are not far right than list the things that are.

So, to be clear, what’s happening on the streets of Britain right now, in the aftermath of those hideous murders, is not about a single piece of ‘disinformation’, ‘misinformation’, some rogue tweet, or a video by a populist politician.

It is the culmination of decades of disastrous policies by our ruling class, the same class that’s now rushing to discredit anybody and everybody who points this out.

The policy of mass immigration which the vast majority of people in this country neither asked for nor voted for.

The complete breakdown of our borders, allowing tens of thousands of unvetted and often dangerous migrants from high-conflict societies into our country.

And the complete disinterest in thinking about how to sustain a cohesive, integrated, high-trust society.

For decades now, the very same politicians who are lining up to denounce much of the rest of the country as ‘far right’ have been pushing soft-on-crime policies while subjecting the British people to porous borders and mass migration from third-world countries where violence, disorder, and misogyny are the norm.

So, is it any wonder that our social fabric is now disintegrating before our eyes? Is it any wonder that mass immigration and the elite obsession with diversity —as academics warned twenty years ago— are now producing a low-trust society with spiralling crime, social atomisation, and growing division?

Is it any wonder that growing numbers of people are staring at their television screens and smartphones, wondering what is happening to the country they love and whether other people out there are thinking the same?

And is it any wonder that, having watched an assortment of radicals and extremists take to Britain’s streets to sing songs about how much they hate the West and Israel, a minority of British people are now doing the same, trying to exercise their voice in a system that no longer appears remotely interested in it?

No, of course it’s not.

What did you expect?

(1)  https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/we-cannot-ignore-the-rise-of-sectarian?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

(2) https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/we-can-deport-them-so-why-dont-we?utm_source=publication-search&utm_medium=email

(3)  https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/britains-looming-demographic-crisis?utm_source=publication-search&utm_medium=email

(4)  https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/the-small-boats-crisis-in-numbers?utm_source=publication-search&utm_medium=email

(5)  https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/islamo-fascism-and-the-woke-left?utm_source=publication-search&utm_medium=email

(6)  https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/we-are-being-led-by-fools?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

(7)  https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1818562558627905977?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email