It's not just populists STOKING "misinformation" --it's the elite class

A REMARKABLE revelation in parliament this week

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Matt Goodwin’s Substack goes to more than 53,200 subscribers from 166 countries around the world and thousands of paying supporters who support our work. Like our stuff? Then help us expand by becoming a paid supporter and access everything —the full archive, exclusive posts, polling, leave comments, join the debate, get discounts, advance notice about events, and the knowledge you’re supporting independent writers who are not afraid to push back against the grain. You can also join our community on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X and Facebook.

There was a truly REMARKABLE revelation in the UK parliament this week and one you probably missed. But before I tell you about it let’s first remember what is happening right now across the West.

A radicalising elite class —an elite class that’s moved sharply to the cultural left over the last fifteen years, partly in response to things like Brexit and Trump— is blaming any outcome it doesn’t like on so-called “misinformation”.

The narrative goes like this. Ordinary people could not REALLY want to vote for political party and politician X. They could not REALLY want to support policy Y. They could not REALLY want to protest about issue Z. They are just “misinformed”.

They read a “misinformed” tweet. They listened to a “misinformed” populist. They watched a “misinformed” video. They rely too much on “misinformed” social media.

In short, rather than accept that millions of people might not want to live in the kind of society that’s now being imposed on them from above by an out-of-touch, insular, and hyper-liberal if not radically progressive elite class, the members of this ruling class are now smothering themselves in a comfort blanket by portraying voters as irrational, ignorant, “misinformed” lemmings, who are being pushed around by Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin … [insert your preferred villain here].

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It’s the populists, in short, who are stoking political chaos and carnage by cultivating and spreading “misinformation” around Western societies. Hence why the elite class is investing so heavily in politically-motivated “fact-checking”, “verifying”, and, as we now see in the UK, a growing clampdown on free speech and free expression. If you can’t change people’s minds, you can at least control the supply of information.

And nowhere is this strategy more visible than on the issue of immigration, where time and time again we are told by politically-motivated journalists, fact-checkers, and the so-called “expert class” that ordinary people expressing concern about this issue simply do not understand the facts and figures. They too are suffering from an outbreak of what we might call “misinformationitis”.

Think mass immigration is worsening the housing crisis? “Misinformed!” Think it’s driving up crime? “Misinformed!” Think it’s weakening the economy? “Misinformed!” Think it’s costing the taxpayer billions in welfare payments? “Misinformed!”

Which brings me back to that REMARKABLE revelation in parliament, which was quietly made by a renegade Conservative Member of Parliament during a committee discussion about immigration, with Nigel Farage and Reform MPs looking on. What was the revelation? Well, brace yourself because there wasn’t one but a series of bombshells, each one more mind-boggling than the last and each one underlining how it’s not populists who are stoking misinformation —it’s the elite class.

The revelations—by Neil O’Brien, Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby, and Wigston—really are devastating.

He pointed to not just a government but an entire political system that is either deliberately concealing masses of information from voters about the impact of immigration, or is doing so through sheer incompetence.

Just look at what he revealed:

• The department for Work and Pensions has STOPPED publishing data on welfare claims by nationality, making it impossible for anybody to ascertain the impact of immigration on the welfare system (and the cost)

• HMRC have STOPPED publishing information on the tax paid and tax credits received by nationality, again making it impossible to build up an accurate picture of how immigration is impacting on the national economy

• the Home Office is now REFUSING to answer detailed questions about the immigration status of people who are imprisoned in UK prisons, making it impossible to gather information on how, if at all, immigration is impacting on crime rates and imprisonment

• even worse, the Home Office actually have these data but they are deliberately REFUSING to publish them

• the Home Office does NOT collect either nationality or immigration data on those people who are arrested on these islands, again making it impossible for us to know how, if at all, immigration is impacting on crime and social order

• the Home Office does NOT reveal, in detail, what it is spending on hotel rooms and accommodation for illegal migrants in the asylum system, once again making it impossible to verify, dispute, or support claims being made

• the Home Office says it DOES NOT KNOW how much it is spending on loans to refugees which is, once again, taxpayer money

As I pointed out on Twitter/X, in a tweet which has now been viewed by nearly 400,000 people, this, not populism, is what is breeding distrust among voters.

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Either the elite class is completely incompetent, or it is deliberately concealing this information from you, the taxpayer, knowing full well that if this information was collected and released then it would likely confirm people’s suspicions about the damaging effects of illegal and legal immigration on their society –as data in other countries is already doing, including Germany, which I discuss in the piece below.

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What we have then is an out-of-touch elite class that is simultaneously accusing voters of suffering “misinformation” while concealing this very information from them! How can ordinary people be misinformed when the state refuses to make critical information like this available to all? What are elites scared of?

If they are so confident in their policy decisions, in their political choices, in their continual assertion that things like immigration are an unalloyed positive for our society then why don’t they just release all the data and let us see it for ourselves?

I think we all know why. Which is why I and others will not stop drawing attention to this glaring hole in the national debate until we get the information, the transparency, and the assessments that the British people, that TAXPAYERS, deserve.

So, what can you do? Well, you could write to your local Member of Parliament and ask them why the above information is not being made public. And you could also explore submitting Freedom of Information requests. Because the status-quo, with the elite class portraying much of the rest of the country as misinformed thickoes while keeping this data and information hidden from them is, clearly, unsustainable.

But this is also bigger than one issue. As I argue in my forthcoming short film, it’s high time that the people who run our country start treating the people who live in our country and are forced to pay the costs of the elite’s disastrous decisions with the respect and decency they deserve. Too many ordinary people are being asked (no, forced) to pay the costs of radical political experiments they neither voted for nor support. The very least the elite class could do is make this information available so we can assess the impact of the decisions that are being forced on the rest of us.

Because, look, if leaders across the West do not want to continue fanning the flames of populism, polarisation, and protest then they urgently need to start treating voters with the respect they deserve —and they could start by making this information available so that we can all have an “informed” debate about what is really happening to our country. Because until they do one point will remain inescapable. It’s not just populists who are stoking “misinformation” —it’s the elite class.

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Matt Goodwin’s Substack goes to more than 53,200 subscribers from 166 countries around the world and thousands of paying supporters who support our work. Like our stuff? Then help us expand by becoming a paid supporter and access everything —the full archive, exclusive posts, polling, leave comments, join the debate, get discounts, advance notice about events, and the knowledge you’re supporting independent writers who are not afraid to push back against the grain. You can also join our community on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X and Facebook.

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