Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin Advised the Wealthiest 1% While Claiming to Stand Against ‘The Elite’

Matthew Goodwin, Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection, has built a lucrative career advising investment banks, wealth managers and multinational consultancies on political risk – while positioning himself as a populist champion of ordinary British people against a “new ruling class”.

A Byline Times analysis of Goodwin’s own pronouncements and corporate event listings reveals a pattern of paid speaking engagements for some of the world’s largest financial institutions. The engagements directly contradict the anti-elite message at the heart of his political project – and raise questions about whose interests his brand of populism actually serves.

Goodwin’s speaker agency, the Blair Partnership, list him as having worked with “hundreds of companies”. His personal website and agency profile confirm engagements with JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Rothschild & Cie, Schroders, the “Magic Circle” law firm Clifford Chance, White & Case, and Google. 

He has also served as director of the Centre for UK Prosperity at the Legatum Institute – a think tank funded by the Legatum Group, a Dubai-based private investment firm founded by the New Zealand-born billionaire Christopher Chandler – and has spoken at the Trilateral Commission, the elite policy forum founded by David Rockefeller in 1973 and widely regarded by populists as a steering committee of the liberal international order.

Goodwin’s public brand, by contrast, rests on the claim that British politics has been captured by what he calls a “new ruling class”. In his 2023 book Values, Voice and Virtue, he argued that a university-educated liberal elite dominates British political life and excludes ordinary people.

 “Britain has always had an out-of-touch elite, of course,” he wrote on his Substack newsletter that year, but “the axis of power is now rapidly tilting toward a new ruling class”.

Together with Professor Roger Eatwell, Goodwin has defined national populism,  a political project with which he identifies, as a movement “which prioritises the culture and interests of the nation and promise[s] to give voice to a people who feel they have been held in contempt by distant and often corrupt elites”. His definition of “elite” focuses on cultural progressives in universities, the civil service and the media – but does not extend to the investment bankers, asset managers and global real estate executives who pay for his analysis.

A Reform spokesperson told Byline Times that Goodwin “uses these talks to explain to elites just out of touch they are and why they are so disconnected from the wants and needs of hard-working people.”

---

The Corporate Speaking Circuit

However, Goodwin’s list of engagements tells a different story. In 2024, he spoke at the Schroders Manchester Investment Conference and at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh for the same firm. Schroders is a global asset management company responsible for around £823 billion in assets under management. Goodwin described the Edinburgh audience as “financial investors and analysts”.

That same year, he gave a keynote on geopolitical trends at the 22nd CFO Forum in Greece, hosted by KPMG, one of the Big Four accountancy and consultancy firms. 

In March 2024, he appeared on a webinar hosted by Utmost Wealth Solutions on “the future of politics and the impact on wealth planning”.

Goodwin has spoken on multiple occasions at events hosted by Owen James, a networking group for independent financial advisory firms. At Winning Advisers North in mid-2025, Owen James posted a summary of Goodwin’s address to business heads from firms with between £100 million and £800 million in assets under management. 

In a separate post from 2024, Goodwin described giving “a keynote talk yesterday on all this and more for a large group of Asset Managers in London” at an Owen James Meeting of Minds event.

In one post from 2024, Goodwin wrote that he “REALLY enjoyed giving a City firm a comprehensive overview of the key trends ahead of the 2024 UK general election”.

Further engagements include a talk aboard HMS Belfast in 2024 for the launch of the Nedgroup Investments Global Strategic Bond fund; a keynote for “infrastructure investors in London” in early 2024; and a breakfast briefing at St James’s Square in mid-2025, where a PR executive posted about hearing Goodwin speak on “the Rise of Reform”.

---

From St Moritz to the Streets of Manchester

Goodwin’s pro-corporate career continued right up to his decision to stand for Reform UK. The party announced him as its candidate on 27 January 2026.

Just two weeks earlier, Goodwin had been at a luxury hotel in St Moritz, Switzerland, delivering the keynote speech at the GRI Institute Chairman’s Retreat – an annual forum for what the organisers describe as “global real estate decision-makers at the top of the deal-making chain”.

In his own LinkedIn post about the event, Goodwin wrote that he “very much enjoyed giving a talk on the demographic and cultural challenges facing the West at the GRI Institute Chairman’s Retreat in Switzerland this week for top investors from around the world”.

---

Championing the 1%, Dividing the Rest

The pattern of corporate engagements raises questions not merely about consistency, but about the purpose of Goodwin’s populism. His anti-elite project targets cultural progressives in the media, universities and the civil service. It does not extend to the multinational investment banks, Dubai-funded think tanks, or Rockefeller-founded forums that have paid for his analysis. The “elite” he attacks, in other words, does not include the wealthiest 1% – the very constituency he serves on the speaking circuit.

At the same time, Goodwin has directed his campaign rhetoric at some of Britain’s most marginalised communities. He has questioned the “Britishness” and “Englishness” of UK-born ethnic minority people. In short, he appears to promote the virtues of ‘National Populism’ to the people, but services the interests of global capital when talking to actual ‘elites’. 

This approach channels public frustration away from the structural economic inequalities sustained by the financial institutions Goodwin advises, and toward immigrants and ethnic minority communities who have no such role in shaping fiscal policy, wages or housing costs.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has at various points positioned himself as an opponent of globalised capital. In November 2024, Farage criticised the Prime Minister for partnering with Blackrock, the asset manager, tweeting: “Big business and big government work together. There is nothing about Sir Keir Starmer that represents change.” 

However, Reform UK is itself structured as a limited company rather than a membership party. Farage is a former commodities trader; the party’s chairman Richard Tice is a multi-millionaire property developer. Its treasurer Nick Candy is a billionaire luxury real estate developer. 

Industry standards for keynote speakers at major financial conferences typically range from £10,000 to £25,000 per engagement. Matt Goodwin’s speaking agency profile has listed work with “hundreds of companies”.

Goodwin is now asking voters in one of Manchester’s most deprived constituencies to trust him as their champion against the establishment. His diary suggests the establishment already has him on speed dial.

A Reform UK spokesman said: “For the last twenty years through his award winning research and his best selling works, Matt has given talks around the world to government, corporations and other prestigious organisations. He uses these talks to explain to elites just out of touch they are and why they are so disconnected from the wants and needs of hard-working people.

“Unlike the Green’s Hannah Spencer who claims she’s just an ordinary working plumber but owns two homes, Matt has never shied away from who he is. In the not-too-recent past, his success in his chosen career would have been celebrated by the left not denigrated.”