Remember me
In the years between 2016 and 2024, England, and its pseudo-colonies of southern Spain, the Algarve and Pattaya City in Thailand, were embroiled in a toxic romance with a 40-something man from Crawley. He had a croaky voice, a permanently distressed brow, and a fondness for Marks and Spencer Autograph Collection pieces and reconciliatory liberalism. Looking back on it today, even with the revisionist light of Dear England fresh in our minds, Gareth Southgate appears as a never-quite-was; a Kinnockian, Al-Gorian figure. Yet it would be highly unfair to paint him as a bureaucrat who never quite had “the touch” because, when he wanted to, Southgate had the capacity to bring England to its knees – to the edge of sanity, and beyond.
Under Southgate’s prudent “let’s-remember-why-we’re-here-lads” stewardship, England became a rudderless republic of tongue-in-cheek ecstasy. A place where, every couple of years, the collective conscientiousness collapsed in a blaze of froth, flares, flags, improvised transportation methods, and arguments about Jack Grealish. For most of this time it felt like Southgate could not control what he had created, his pleas for calm ignored like an Ikea regional manager on Black Friday.
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