Matt Goodwin, the GB News presenter standing for Reform UK in this month’s Gorton and Denton byelection, says he wants his “country back”. But Good Law Project can reveal that he received a salary of up to €10,000 a month from a far-right pressure group based in Hungary.

Goodwin has been speaking at Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) events since 2024 and seems to have served as a “visiting fellow” since at least last summer, when he returned to Budapest in August to speak on a panel moderated by the British anti-trans commentator Joanna Williams.

According to leaked documents obtained by Direkt 36, visiting fellows are paid between €5,000 and €10,000 per month “plus housing, office space, health insurance and, where appropriate, family support”. The fellowship ranges from two weeks to a year, but Direkt 36 found that it’s common for fellows to continue on a retainer. The investigation also found one-off guest speakers from abroad are paid handsomely: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son was paid €7,000 for two one-hour panel discussions.

MCC is a college and propaganda outfit for Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán based in Budapest. It is funded in part by a 10% stake in MOL Group – an energy giant that refines oil, most of which comes from Russia.

Last week, we revealed how MCC has spent more than £500,000 giving a megaphone to extreme rightwing voices in the UK. The college is plugged into an influence operation built around the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation – a network that includes Nigel Farage’s senior adviser and anti-abortion theologian James Orr, the Spectator editor and former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Gove, the anti-trans figurehead Kathleen Stock and the 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, MCC representatives and officials from Hungary’s energy and European Union Affairs ministries.