After last night’s insipid 1-0 win over Austria, England manager Gareth Southgate had plenty to say – and not just about the football itself. Responding to fans who booed when the Three Lions’ players ‘took the knee’ before the game, Southgate told journalists that ‘we have got a situation where some people seem to think it’s a political stand that they don’t agree with’ adding that ‘some people aren’t quite understanding the message.’
It seems the former Crystal Palace captain’s words have not found favour with right-wing Tory MPs whose Common Sense anti-woke manifesto was published last month. New boy Brendan Clarke-Smith has today written a lengthy Facebook statement criticising the ‘ridiculous empty gesture’ of ‘taking a knee’ and taking aim at the ‘misguided’ football authorities for failing to realise that Black Lives Matter is a political movement which ‘promotes some quite eccentric and extreme policies, such as abolishing the nuclear family and defunding the police.’ He
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