When I ran for parliament in 2024 – not entirely successfully – there was one golden rule: that the candidate must make him or herself as visible as possible. So I got chased by a 10-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex while wearing an orange beanie and stuck our film on X/ Twitter for a quarter of a million people to have a laugh at.
Reform UK’s man in Gorton and Denton, Matt Goodwin, is doing things differently. He is running for office in one of Britain’s poorest constituencies by playing the Invisible Man. So is his team. You won’t find Reform UK’s HQ in this south-east corner of Manchester on the internet. Ask the Greens, though, and they will tell you that it is in a mini industrial estate at the back of Denton railway station.
On the one side is the dragon’s roar of the M60; on the other a brutalist warehouse painted salmonella pink. In a high window sits a clue that a populist uprising is in the making: a turquoise sign inviting people to support Reform UK. As the drizzle from the dishcloth-grey sky turns into dogs, also cats, camera op Jeremiah Quinn and I sashay into the industrial estate. A big car pauses, and we get clocked by a man within.
Aquatic canines and felines carpet-bomb us as we walk towards the warehouse. Two black-clad security men step away from the shelter of their salmonella citadel and block our approach.
Sweeney: “Hello, my name is John Sweeney and I work for the Nerve. I would like to talk to Matt Goodwin.”
First Security Man: “Is your friend here recording by any chance?”
Sweeney: “Yes, he is.”
FSM: “Do me a favour and don’t get my face in please. Not to be rude, but we are third-party contractors.”
We respect that.
Sweeney: “Is it possible to talk to the candidate?”
FSM: “Matt isn’t here.”
After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, a press officer pops out into the dachshunds and Burmese underneath an umbrella. He is the man in the big car. He says he recognises me and introduces himself as John Gill, and tells me we have met before – at the Stoke-on-Trent byelection in 2017, when Ukip’s candidate was Paul Nuttall, who struck me as something of a Schrodinger's player for Tranmere Rovers, in that he both did and didn't turn out for 'the Superwhites'. (Nuttall was a Tranmere youth team player but didn't turn out for the first team, a claim he said was wrongly made by Wikipedia, not him.)
Gill tells me that Goodwin is not “prioritising” the media but is out on the stump. This is a carbon copy of what happened when Llŷr Powell, Reform UK’s candidate in the Caerphilly byelection for the Senedd, stood last year. It is fair to point out that Powell said he had received 55 death threats and had to be moved from his home to an undisclosed location during campaigning. And also to point out that Gwent police said they had not received any reports of safety concerns over Powell from him or his party.
Goodwin playing hard to get for the media might also be explained by a potentially embarrassing story claiming that he had used inappropriate language with a young female researcher at GB News, where the former academic is a TV presenter (as is party leader Nigel Farage). Reform UK has threatened to sue the Guardian for its reporting but, as far as the Nerve understands, no writ has been issued. Farage has said of the row that it boils down to “Matt being Matt”. Goodwin has denied acting inappropriately.
The byelection has been caused by the exit of former Labour MP Andrew Gwynne, who resigned for “health reasons” but also because he sent some career-killing WhatsApp messages, including some plainly antisemitic ones. Greater Manchester’s Labour mayor, Andy Burnham, wanted to run as their candidate but was nixed by the party’s National Executive Committee – and that has created Reform UK’s opportunity.
I have done thousands of vox-pops in my old job and I have never known a bigger refusal-to-engage rate
There are three candidates who have a serious chance of winning: Goodwin for Reform UK, the Green party’s Hannah Spencer – she is both a plumber and the bookies’ favourite – and Labour’s Angeliki Stogia.
The race is close and it is hard to gauge Reform UK’s popularity. What is weird is that the people who are likely to vote for Goodwin seem to be ticking the “no publicity” box too. Call me an irritating twat in an orange beanie – go on, I dare you – but I have done thousands of vox-pops in my old job, 17 years as a BBC reporter, and I have never known a bigger refusal-to-engage rate. You normally expect every two out of three people to give you the swerve or bark a quick no. In Gorton and Denton, nine out of 10 punters give me the heave-ho.
The constituency is one of the poorest in the country by any metric: prosperity, house prices, number of people who have attended university, life expectancy. It is the 15th most deprived of England's 543 seats. Just less than half of the constituency's children live below the breadline. In Longsight East, average household disposable income is £23,000 a year, which is grindingly poor. This is a community that is really pissed off with politics, and that makes me suspect that at least some of the people who don't want to engage with me are going to vote Reform.
Two people do engage: the first is an elderly gentleman who has always voted Labour.
Why Reform?
“Because I've had enough of Labour.”
A second is a widow buying a car park ticket for her Fiat 500.
“Reform.”
Why?
“The MP that's gone off on ill health. He’s stopped my heating allowance and I nursed my husband with Alzheimer’s and dementia for eight years. No, I’d had enough of all of them. I voted Labour all my life. I’m 84. I’ve had enough. I’m glad I'm on my way out and not my way in. I don’t like the world any more, so I’m sorry. I’m not saying they [Reform] will be any better than the others. Anyone. I really, I really don’t know. But I’ve got to put my vote there.”
Keir Starmer rocks up while we are in town but seemingly at a private, Labour-party-only event, or one, at least, that we don’t know about. In the constituency all day, we see just one Labour placard and meet one Labour voter, who acknowledges his choice is an unpopular one. Still, he says, “I want to keep that fascist Nigel Farage out.”
The candidate who is ever so very happy to talk to the Nerve is the plumber, Hannah Spencer. Green placards and posters are everywhere in the constituency and Spencer is great on the doorstep – down-to-earth, funny, local. One mum is delighted to find her campaigning in her street; a second younger mum opens her door and whoops with delight.
“Labour have abandoned benefits for people who desperately need them,” Spencer tells me.
Missing from the mix is Farage, Reform UK’s messiah in tweeds. I hunt up and down the gunnels at the back of the terrace back-to-backs but it turns out he is on national security business elsewhere.
Not in Gorton and Denton but, natch, the Maldives.