Timmy Mallett in the arena
The absolute arse ache of debating someone you don't like for people who don't particularly like you...
Previously:
“You debate like a baby.”
“You dress like a child.”
“You shouted.” The comments under Politics Joe’s video of my debate with Professor Matthew Goodwin are actually pretty great. Lots of people seem to think I won (whatever the fuck that means) but you always remember the bad feedback and most of all the stupid feedback.
Prof. Goodwin, straight from Politics Live on the BBC, was wearing a white shirt, a blue jacket, smart trousers and smart shoes. I had a green army shirt over a pink hoodie over a t-shirt that reads “Pop art is for everyone”, along with blue jeans, and red, white, and black Jordans. I chose my outfit carefully; I dress like a man who writes in his living room and not someone who writes reports for think tanks and gives talks for investment banks.
I could have put on a suit, but it would be cosplay. Is that what’s required for you to take an argument seriously? If it is, I think you are unserious. Clothes maketh the man is some bullshit pushed by tailors.
The other complaint is that I shouldn’t have debated Goodwin to start with. I don’t believe that. He’s saying things I passionately disagree with and I’m just expected to cede the field to him? I understand that other people thought my debating him was wrong; I respect that we differ on tactics but I wanted to take the challenge he put out there.
He has a far bigger platform — more social media followers, more money, more professional kudos (he became a professor very young), more interview spots, and a book just published by Penguin. Me debating him is a pebble thrown into a pond after huge rocks have been tossed in.
I didn’t ‘enjoy’ the debate. I felt I had done well and made my arguments. Do I debate in the dispassionate way Goodwin does? No. Because this isn’t a game to me. I was there to take the issues seriously but not to take him seriously. I think his book is unserious — I say so in the debate — but I think his rhetoric is dangerous and it comes from a long history of horrible ideas presented by a ‘polite’ man in the right clothes, with the right friends, and the Right on his side.
Some chippy prick on Twitter said I looked like Timmy Mallett. I don’t mind the comparison. Timmy Mallett is a brilliant painter and entertainer who explained hard topics like apartheid to children. My arguments, language, and approach are for adults but I don’t take myself hyper-seriously. I know I am a clown but I’m a clown that gives a shit, a clown with some arguments that might make you look beyond the greasepaint and the tiny car.
I’ve kept this edition short. You’ve heard enough from me recently and I’m still recovering, but here’s the debate. Watch it if you want1:
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I’ll also post the video of me reacting to and speaking about the experience from last night’s Twitch live stream on YouTube later today.
Hi there Mic
One of your paying subscribers here, first time commenter…keep up the good work, I am awestruck by the level of detail and research you get into your Substacks. I’m amazed that you can go into such depth, into some historical corners which otherwise seem forgotten, that you find new angles or previously (to my knowledge) unreferenced historical examples to shed light on today’s media landscape never ceases to amaze.
But look after your health too! If you need to take a break, take some breaks or holidays if you need to. Sure, we’ll miss you, but it sounds like it’s important that you stay healthy and live in other ways in your offline life. OK, hope that doesn’t sound too patronising or obvious…
Anyway, onto your debate with M Goodwin. Good on you for doing this. Could see you were a little nervous – I reckon Goodwin had more practice than you beforehand under the ‘studio lights’, so came across as a little more relaxed than you were, but that’s life, I suppose, it can’t be helped.
I don’t know if you also watched the interview he did with Novara Media which was a kind of similar format. I guess Aaron Bastani comes from experience as being a more relaxed and practiced interviewer – and managed to locate some good points of challenge and weakness from Goodwin early on. I’d recommend you to watch it (if you aren’t already sick of thinking about Goodwin, of course!).
I had a few thoughts on Goodwin, which I thought I’d share with you – I haven’t read the book. Haven’t any intention to. But his ‘argument’ was fairly straightforward I thought. He’s similar in a way to near namesake David Goodhart – for my sins I have forced myself to read two of that guy’s books…
Goodwin sets himself up as a kind of “prole whisperer”, thinking himself a representative of an ignored strain of supposedly working class thinking – Brexity, socially conservative, anti-immigration, anti-benefit. He takes a wholly one-eyed view the beliefs he projects on to one sector of the population which he then labels as more authentic – more British, more traditional – than other strains of thinking (like the dreaded ‘woke’).
Of course, this is a load of horseshit. Anybody who has spent any time living in the UK becomes fully aware that there’s a full spectrum of beliefs and political standpoints amongst ‘authentic’ members of the UK populace. And who counts as ‘authentic’ anyway? Goodwin hasn’t set out his parameters, except perhaps he’s selecting those who haven’t gone on to higher education, don’t live in London – and I find it hard to believe he’s so familiar with this demographic that he’s established solidly what they “believe” (ok, this could be in the book).
What David Goodhart did in his book ‘The Road to Somewhere’ (which covers similar areas) was that he took survey and polling data to show ‘in general’ what the ‘Somewheres’ believed. However if I remember that book rightly, he discarded or ignored evidence that the ‘’Somewheres” were interested in a funded NHS, decent welfare payments, housebuilding (these things weren’t interesting to him it seems) and only emphasised any result if it supported his supposition that the demographic only cared about restricting immigration, ‘traditional’ values, tightening welfare spending. It’s right there in front of your eyes on the pages of the book. If a “value” isn’t to Goodhart’s liking, it is totally forgotten in the passages where he recommends policy implementations based on a selective reading of the research into what ‘ordinary’ voters want. Naturally it’s a very right-wing prescription. What a coincidence, in line with what Goodhart has decided already.
With Goodwin, from his interviews it is bizarre. He just seems to think that ‘liberal’ or left wing thought just shouldn’t be there at all. It’s just illegitimate, as far as he is concerned, and people shouldn’t be thinking such “woke” thoughts. He gives no reason for this, other than his personal distaste for it.
It’s from a long line of right-wing conspiracy mongering that can’t accept that people just form different opinions in reaction to their life experience. To explain this by some conspiracy theory – like the trope of cultural Marxism stampeding through institutions – rather than accepting that it’s a natural phenomenon that within populations a range of political views develop organically – is, I agree with you, very dangerous.
Because it attempts to ‘other’ a whole range of political thoughts as unnatural, inauthentic, non-British, non-patriotic in order to delegitimise and stigmatise.
But at the same time, Goodwin is kinda laughable. What makes him the spokesman for the common man or woman? Nothing. Just a guy blowing hot air around interview tables, and plugging a book almost nobody is going to read.
Again, keep up the good work, in my view, you’re one of the most interesting guys on the internet and long may remain so,
You're right to give the style police a wide berth. True to his abstractions of "average voters" and "ordinary working class people", Goodwin was wearing the uniform of the pundit class. You weren't representing a class, only yourself - even whilst he would project onto you / us a class "agenda". The same critiques were made of Cornyn, of course, by many of the same people.