Matt Goodwin has financial backing from a Hungarian private college pushing far-right ideology and culture wars in the UK
Matt Goodwin, Reform’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election received up to €10,000 a month from a Hungarian private college which is part-funded by Russian oil.
Goodwin has been speaking at Mathias Corvinus Collegium, which has close ties to far-right leader Viktor Orbán since 2024, the Good Law Project has found.
The Reform candidate, who says he wants his “country back”, also appears to have been a “visiting fellow” at the college since at least last summer, when he went to Budapest to speak on a MCC panel.
According to documents seen by Direkt36, an investigative journalism centre in Hungary, fellows are paid between €5,000 and €10,000 per month, “plus housing, office space, health insurance and, where appropriate, family support”.
Fellowships last from two weeks to a year, but Direkt36 found that it is common for fellows to be retained after a year “if there is mutual sympathy”.
The investigation also found that MCC pays one-off guest speakers handsomely. For example, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu, was paid €7000 for two one-hour panel discussions.
MCC, which has a €1bn endowment from the Hungarian government and is partly funded through a 10% stake in MOL Group, has been described as a “propaganda outfit” for Orbán.
Most of the energy giant MOL group’s oil comes from Russia.
More broadly, MCC has spent more than £500,000 promoting right-wing voices in the UK via the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation.
Figures linked to the foundation include James Orr, who is now Reform’s Head of Policy, editor of the Spectator Michael Gove and Palantir co-founder and friend of Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Thiel.
In October 2025, Goodwin spoke at the Roger Scruton symposium at the Hungarian Embassy in London alongside other figures from the British right and MCC representatives.
These revelations indicate that Goodwin, who has called for young girls to receive a “biological reality check” and suggested that women without children should pay more tax, is being funded by groups pushing far-right ideology and culture wars in the UK.
Reform has denied that MCC paid Goodwin €10,000 a month and rejected the idea that the college is “funded by money from Russia”.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski said the Good Law project’s investigation makes it all the more important that Reform are defeated in the Gorton and Denton by-election.
Polanski said: “This is more confirmation that Reform and Goodwin are not just part of an extremist anti-British project, but are also enriching themselves on foreign far-right money.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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