Failed Reform UK candidate Matt Goodwin will not attend a secretive black-tie dinner hosted by a far-right group, despite having been advertised as its keynote speaker, Novara Media can reveal.

The far-right Traditional Britain Group (TBG) had privately told “a select audience” that Goodwin, a former academic who contributes to GB News, would be the speaker at its black-tie dinner on 13 June, in an email revealed by anti-fascist researchers last week.

But when Novara Media asked Goodwin about his speech at the lavish meal, he said: “I will not be speaking at this event.”

Novara Media repeatedly asked him to clarify why TBG had said he would speak, asking him whether he had pulled out or if it had been an error in the first place. He did not reply, except to say: “I’m not sure what the story is apart from I’m not speaking at the event,” adding that he would “let my lawyer know to keep an eye out” for our story.

The TBG website advertised its central London black-tie dinner, saying “a well-known mainstream British political figure most closely associated with issues of demographic change” would speak at the event, but added that his identity was “being withheld for now”. The speaker is “controversial on both the left and even in some sections of the British right”, the website said.

It added that the formal black-tie dinner will take place at a “first class” hotel near South Kensington tube station, in affluent west London. Attendees will not be told the location until “late afternoon on the day preceding… This is our standard security procedures. Those in good standing who need to know sooner can always contact us.”

Despite the secrecy surrounding the event, a private email sent to TBG supporters giving more details was uncovered by antifascist research group Red Flare and seen by Novara Media. It said, “For a more select audience (recent membership, Patrons etc.) we can now disclose that the speaker for this event will be the academic, author and political activist Matthew Goodwin.”

The TBG website said the meal would be “a great opportunity for a select audience to share viewpoints and an evening of general conviviality”.

Attendees will get a three-course meal, half a bottle of wine and a drink upon arrival, for £75. The event will be at a “subsidised rate due to [the] generosity of a benefactor, due to cost inflation”.

“There will be an opportunity, naturally, to embellish your refreshments with other paid options at the prestigious venue,” the website said.

Red Flare described TBG as a group which “bridges the gap between the hard right of mainstream Conservatism and explicit fascism”. TBG administrative secretary Richard Curry called this “complete rubbish” and denied being far-right.

In 2013, fellow GB News contributor Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was then a Tory MP, apologised after speaking at a TBG dinner. He claimed he was ignorant of the far-right connections and said he “clearly made a mistake” in attending. At the time, the TBG Facebook page had called for Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, and “millions of others” to be “requested to return to their natural homelands”.

Asked about this, Curry denied any far-right connections and said Rees-Mogg apologised because “he is a coward”.

Posts by Mark Collett and Laura Melia, figures from Britain’s largest neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative, have been shared on the TBG Telegram channel. Curry said, “We have no control over random posts by others. They do not necessarily reflect the TBG’s aims and objectives.”

Other past speakers at TBG events have included American alt-right activist Richard Spencer, Austrian identitarians Martin Sellner and Markus Willinger, and co-founder of Patriotic Alternative, Melia. Curry said that Spencer was “just an American magazine editor at the time” and that Patriotic Alternative did not exist when Melia spoke to the group.

In 2023, TBG founder Gregory Lauder-Frost told an undercover researcher for Hope Not Hate at a post-event drinks: “As long as you go through life knowing that women are completely pathetic, you’ll be really successful.”

Its email to members about the black-tie dinner said: “Our people are finally stirring, which is brilliant for us and for our cause. We have to educate the masses as to what is going on in our country, our natural and spiritual homeland.”

TBG did not respond to our questions about why Goodwin was not speaking at its event. It refused to disclose the identity of its benefactor.

Goodwin is a former academic turned supposedly anti-elite culture warrior. In February, he stood as a candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection and lost to the Green party’s Hannnah Spencer.

He was jokingly referred to as “Matt Badloss” and later “MattGPT”, after claims – which he denied – that he used AI to write his recent book, Suicide of a Nation: Immigration, Islam, Identity, which one reviewer described as “intellectual suicide”.

In its email, TBG told its members that the book had been “covered in a series of articles and podcasts, some critically”.

A spokesperson for Red Flare said Goodwin being advertised as a speaker at TBG is “an indication of how completely his politics has denigrated” and “another nail in the coffin for his credibility”.

“His politics, and those of Reform, are increasingly simpatico with the worst elements of our society.”

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