The joke was always made that Gareth Southgate would make a better Prime Minister than football manager. A recent talk for the BBC’s annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture only confirms this – and might even suggest a career as a preacher. Okay, that last bit is perhaps a tad far-fetched (Southgate is not known to be religious), but as I watched snippets of the speech and read its transcript, I said to my wife (a vicar) that it has echoes of a sermon…

This article appeared on the Premier Christianity blog in March 2025. To read the full piece, please click here.