Am I an 'extremist'? Or am I just saying what most people think?
Brand new surveys of the British population suggest it's the latter
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In recent weeks, since publishing my new book Suicide of a Nation, I’ve been attacked and called many things. Dangerous. Divisive. Toxic. Even ‘extremist’.
All because of one book.
A book that also happens to have rocketed to the very top of the national bestseller charts and which this week was confirmed by the respected Bookseller magazine to still be the second biggest-selling non-fiction paperback in Britain, which suggests it will once again appear in the Sunday Times bestseller list this weekend.
In all honesty, and I mean this, I don’t care what people call me. They can call me names. They can attack my character. They can try to tear me down.
Because all that really matters to me is that I give a voice to the countless people who don’t have one - the forgotten majority of hardworking people who are sick and tired of being treated like second-class citizens in their own country and forced to watch the decline and destruction of the only home they have ever known.
But the book’s success and the strong reaction to it does raise an intriguing question.
What if the people who are spending all this time attacking me have completely misread the mood of the country they claim to speak for? What if all those left-wing critics, Tory Wets, and BBC-types are woefully out-of-touch with modern Britain?
Because when you step back from the noise and look at the latest data a very different picture emerges - one that raises far more uncomfortable questions for not just my critics but the entire ruling class:
What if the arguments I present in the book are not extreme at all? What if they are mainstream in this country? And what if the main thesis of the book is actually much closer to the average person than my critics would like to accept?
These questions are not just rhetorical. Because we have fresh evidence.
In recent days, a comprehensive new survey of the British people was released by the respected pollsters JL Partners.
And it really does lift the lid on what the people really think about issues that lie at the heart of my book - from mass immigration to the extent to which people now feel like a stranger in their own country.
The results are striking.
Entirely consistent with what I say in the book, they find that most people in Britain today now feel they “no longer recognise my country because of the scale of immigration in recent years”.
Overall, 51 per cent of British people feel this way — which then steadily rises to 52 per cent among the English, 55 per cent among white Britons, 58 per cent among people who do not belong to the university class, 60 per cent among older voters, 62 per cent among Conservative voters, and to 86 per cent among Reform voters.
Revealingly, even close to one-third of black and minority ethnic British people feel the same way - that they no longer recognise Britain because of immigration.
And that’s not all.
What the pollsters also find is what I point to in the book - a profound and deep sense of disconnection among ordinary people with the political class in Westminster.
Two-thirds of the entire country now agree with the statement “politics is broken and no one knows how to fix Britain”, which again surges among many of the same groups. Significantly, more than three-quarters of Reform voters feel this way.
And while it is certainly true that some people say they “embrace diversity and think it makes Britain a better place to live”, look closely and you will find wildly different views among different groups.
While a majority of university graduates, ethnic minority voters, young people, and those who vote Labour, Green, or Liberal Democrat think positively about diversity and how it’s changing Britain, millions of people across the country do not - only minorities of people who do not belong to the university class, are white, older, vote Tory or Reform feel the same way. Consistently, these groups are far more sceptical if not openly negative towards how ‘diversity’ is changing Britain.
I could go on.
Because this is not the only survey in recent weeks which supports what I argue in the book - namely, that millions of people from the forgotten majority of hardworking, law-abiding, decent Brits can sense they are not only losing their country but are now completely excluded from our politics, culture, and the national conversation.
Here are just a few facts you won’t hear much about on the BBC, for example.
Three-quarters of all British people think immigration is being managed badly. Nearly seven in ten think immigration ‘has been too high in the last ten years’. Exactly two-thirds, according to Ipsos-MORI, think immigration is ‘too high’ today.
Most people do not think Britain should allow in more of the same low-income, low-skill migrants who came on the disastrous ‘Boriswave’. The number of people who now believe that mass immigration is having a negative impact on Britain’s economy, communities, public services, crime, schools, and the country overall is greater than the number who think it’s having a positive impact. And only one in five believe immigration has been unequivocally ‘good’ for Britain.
Far from being confined to some fringe or extreme minority, in other words, many of the views that I represent and openly defend in Suicide of a Nation run deep and wide across the country. They are the mainstream.
In fact, I would go even further - my book is much closer to the pulse of the nation than my critics, many of whom spend their days in the BBC, SW1, Oxbridge, or terminally online while still living at home with their parents.
What is now routinely dismissed as “extreme”, “toxic”, or “divisive” in Westminster and the legacy media is, in reality, shared by a very large slice of the country.
This is why the book is connecting.
This is why it’s a national bestseller.
And this is why, like it or not, it is going to become a major reference point in our country and culture, irrespective of the endless attacks against it.
Because it speaks openly and passionately for the forgotten majority. And because, most days now, I am out there in the country - in cities, towns, villages - taking the book on tour and presenting it from one conference centre, one restaurant, one pub to the next.
If holding the views that I share and promote in the book makes me an extremist, then the real question is actually not about me at all.
It’s about how long the ruling class in Westminster can go on dismissing a majority of its own people before it is completely overthrown.
You're at 2,000 feet, Matt, flack all around you. Why? Because, as you know, you are right over the target.
The reality is you are being attacked by extremists, fascists and the deluded. . It’s a classic case of projection .