Reform byelection candidate refuses to disown claim that people born in UK not necessarily British

The Reform UK candidate in the Denton" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="16471" data-entity-type="location">Gorton and Denton byelection has refused to disown his claim that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not necessarily British.Matthew Goodwin, a hard-right activist, was presented on Tuesday as the party’s candidate in the demographically diverse seat in south-east Manchester.Goodwin has been criticised for claiming recently that people from black, Asian or other immigrant backgrounds were not always British, saying: “It takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody ‘British’.”Speaking at an event in Denton, the GB News presenter twice declined to answer when asked by the Guardian whether he stood by those views – described by the Liberal Democrats as “racist” and “abhorrent”.Nearly half of the Denton" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="16471" data-entity-type="location">Gorton and Denton population – 44% – identifies as coming from a minority ethnic background, while 79% of the constituency identifies as British, according to the latest census.Goodwin refused to answer the Guardian’s questions as he posed for photographs alongside the Reform MP Lee Anderson at a bar in Denton.Anderson, the Reform chief whip, described Goodwin as a “fearless” activist who would “debate anybody at any time”.Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader, said Goodwin’s politics sought to “drive a wedge between communities in Manchester” and that Reform offered “division, animosity and hatred – not the unity and pride which our city stands for”.The Green Party leader, Zack Polanski, alleged that Goodwin had “a track record of anti-Muslim bigotry” and that his candidacy was an insult to constituents.Polanski, whose party is the bookies’ favourite to win, has characterised the byelection as a fight between Reform and the Greens, describing it as “a straight contest between hope and hate”.Reform is trying to overturn Labour’s 13,000-vote majority and gain its ninth MP, after the defection of the former Conservative home secretary Suella Braverman on Monday.The Green Party is also challenging strongly for the seat, which has a significant left-voting population and whose voters sent a Labour MP to Westminster for decades before the boundary changes in 2024.Goodwin’s selection as the Reform candidate has surprised some commentators, given his outspoken views on British nationality and Islam.Only three weeks ago, he wrote that Britain’s “ruling class” was “silencing” debate about Islam in “one of the most serious assaults on free speech and free expression Britain has ever seen”. More than one in four voters in Denton" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="16471" data-entity-type="location">Gorton and Denton identify as Muslim.Asked for his message to the thousands of minority ethnic voters in the constituency, Goodwin told reporters: “My message to everybody in this seat is [that] if you are working hard, paying taxes, contributing to this economy, you should be as concerned by what’s happening in No 10 Downing Street as I am.“We have got a government under Keir Starmer that is clearly not in touch with the people in this seat. It’s not about what your religion is, it’s not about what your race is, what your ethnicity is.“It’s about whether or not you play by the rules, whether or not you feel that you’re being respected, you feel the system is being fair to you … I don’t view it in those divisive terms. I think lots of people in this seat are going to be saying we’ve had the [Labour] party in this constituency for all of our lives and what’s changed?”Anderson, a former Conservative MP, said Reform would focus its byelection campaign on crime, the decline of the high street, and houses of multiple occupancy – which he claimed were home to “upwards of four or five single young men, creating all sorts of mayhem, committing crimes, terrorising neighbourhoods”.Goodwin and Anderson referred several times in the 30-minute press conference to the issue of child grooming gangs, an issue that is most potent in nearby Rochdale and Oldham council areas.Goodwin described Reform’s lead in the polls as “the most significant insurgency since the rise of the Labour Party 100 years ago when it replaced the Liberals. This is a seismic political revolution that we’re all living through.”