‘Handmaid’s Tale future’: Reform’s Matt Goodwin sparks outcry with fertility comments

Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection has been accused of wanting a “Handmaid’s Tale future” after unearthed YouTube footage revealed he called for “young girls and women” to be given a “biological reality” check.

In a clip posted to his personal YouTube channel in November 2024, Matt Goodwin stated that “many women in Britain are having children much too late in life”.

He said: “We need to also explain to young girls and women the biological reality of this crisis. Many women in Britain are having children much too late in life and they would prefer to have children much earlier on.”

The comments, first reported by the Independent, have sparked a furious backlash, with one MP describing it as an “alt right fantasy” and an equality campaigner calling it “truly troubling”. The revelations come days after the paper revealed Goodwin previously suggested people who don’t have children should be taxed extra as punishment.

Sarah Owen, the chair of the Commons women and equalities committee, said the comments were “deeply offensive” and appeared to blame women for the declining birthrate.

“For anyone with fertility issues, like me who struggled with miscarriage after miscarriage, to say [to them] we should be paying more tax for not having children or that it is our fault is deeply offensive, as it is for LGBT+ people or women who can’t afford to have kids,” she said. “It’s clear he didn’t run this grotesque idea past any women in real life.”

Natalie Fleet, the Labour MP for Bolsover, who was groomed and became pregnant as a 15-year-old, said her pregnancy had happened at a “biologically great age” and she had experienced a “physically perfect pregnancy and easy birth”. But, she added, she had been through “hell on earth”.

Natalie Fleet MP, seen here at her office last year, was critical of Matt Goodwin’s comments. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

Addressing the former academic on social media, she wrote: “Is this the kind of thing you’ll be wanting to see in our Handmaid’s Tale future?” A reference to the Margaret Atwood novel set in a dystopian future.

In a separate podcast with the rightwing author and commentator Jordan Peterson, Goodwin also appeared to agree with the host’s claim that universities have become hotbeds of “politically correct authoritarianism” because they are full of “childless women”.

In a February 2025 clip, Peterson said there were three predictors of “politically correct authoritarianism”, of which the first was “being female”, at which point Goodwin interjected and added: “I was going to say that.”

Peterson added that an “ethos of harm avoidance” had proliferated because universities “became dominated by not only women – this is even worse, I might as well go in all the way – childless women”.

Goodwin responded: “Yeah, actually there are a couple of papers on that Jordan, I’m sure you’ve seen, I think Cory Clark. I’ve read a couple I think showing basically the feminisation of higher education over the last 50 years.”

Matt Goodwin and Nigel Farage attend an election campaign event in Manchester earlier this month. Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA

A Reform spokesperson said the two men “were discussing peer-reviewed academic studies showing clear psychological differences between men and women, which influence their views of cancel culture”.

Responding to queries about Goodwin suggesting in 2023 that the government “remove personal income tax for women who have two or more children”, the party said Goodwin had not called for childless women to be taxed more but it was time for a “grown-up, mature debate about how we can encourage people to have more children and support British families”.

Hannah Spencer, the Green party candidate in Gorton and Denton, said women were struggling with the cost of living, caring responsibilities and health inequalities in NHS services. “I wish the Reform candidate put more time into addressing problems and less into looking for divisive, easy answers,” she said.

Penny East, the chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said the “idea that we should be telling young girls they have a moral obligation to have children earlier is both dystopian and deeply sexist […] Suggesting early motherhood is a civic duty is truly troubling.”

Writing on social media, the Walthamstow MP, Stella Creasy, said: “I long for the days when a midlife crisis for men like this meant getting a motorbike and a leather jacket, not trying to [get] elected so they could indulge their alt right fantasies about ensuring women were pregnant as soon as they were fertile and then didn’t go to university.”