Do you know who I feel sorry for? The National Theatre. Next March it opens a new run of Dear England, James Graham’s tribute to the England football manager Gareth Southgate. As things stand, the script will need the intervention of a sensitivity reader.
Southgate’s star is falling. After England’s nil-nil draw against Slovenia on Tuesday, English fans booed and threw empty beer cups at him. This wasn’t defeat (England proceeded to the knockout stages of the European Championships); but it still felt like betrayal.
Maybe the most bitter divorces follow the most intense love affairs. The British public once felt so let down by Tony Blair precisely because it had been so enamoured of him. So too with Southgate.