Gareth Southgate blasts Brexit as having “racial undertones”

England manager Gareth Southgate has spoken out about Brexit.

Speaking in June for Out Of Their Skin, an ITV documentary on the rise of black footballers he said,

“I didn’t like the connotations around Brexit. There were some generational opinions about what modern Britain should look like. We felt that young people in particular would connect with our guys.

“Because they must have been confused after Brexit. Because for me a lot of the undertones of the voting on Brexit were racial undertones.”

The documentary ran last night, and his words are already being hotly debated.

On the BBC’s Politics Live this morning, ConservativeHome’s Mark Wallace, who supports Brexit, denied that those who voted Leave did so for racist reasons,

“One thing a lot of Leave voters have had experience of since the referendum, is being told by people who did not vote Leave exactly what their motivations were for doing so.”

He added that there is a stereotype of Leave voters as racists which is unfair.

Writer Maya Goodfellow countered that the Leave campaign had focused on the threat of Turkish mass immigration, even though Turkey is not actually an EU member,

“When the Leave campaign ran a campaign that was centred around Turkey joining the EU and supposed criminals from Turkey coming into Britain and that being a threat to British safety, that is the definition of racialisation. “

Jill Rutter from the Institute for Government added added that there were many motivations behind people voting Leave.

The fourth panelist on the show, comedian Matt Forde and Remain voter said,

“We’ve got to stop characterising Leave voters as racist.

“Parts of the campaign absolutely manipulated racial tension, There’s no doubt that some Leave voters voted in a way that was informed by some of those prejudices but on the whole, those on the Remain side have to accept that it was a myriad of reasons; one of which was race but it’s not the only one.”

Asked if Southgate had added anything to the debate, Forde added,

“Absolutely, and he comes from an informed position. This is a man who coaches a lot of players of mixed race and black English players, so they’ve been through racial abuse in other countries.”

This is the first time, the England boss has spoken about Brexit directly, but he has already spoke about how the diversity in race of his England team can bring the country together,

“We are a team with our diversity that represent the modern England.

“In England we’ve spent a bit of time being a bit lost as to what our modern identity is and hopefully people can connect with us. We have the chance to affect something bigger than ourselves.”

Goodfellow’s point about racial scaremongering is borne out by a poster produced by the Leave campaign during the referendum.

One Brexit poster showed Nigel Farage in front of a line of dark faces queuing to get into the UK, although no EU country has a majority non white population

The anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage is standing in front of a long line of ‘coloured’ faces, mostly resembling Turks and Arabs. No EU nation has a population remotely resembling the line behind him, so one can only wonder what the ‘racial undertones’ the poster was intended to stroke.

Whatever his motivations were, it worked and England voted by 15,188,406 (53.38%) to 13,266,996 (46.62%) to leave the EU along with Wales, while Northern Ireland and most all of Scotland voted to remain, the latter by 62% to 38%.

A Brexit withdrawal deal has been reached between Theresa May’s UK Government and the EU and the UK Parliament will vote on it on December 11th.  All indications though are that Parliament will reject it and that leaves the future uncertain.

Prime Minister May has warned Brexiteers that voting down her deal will lead to no Brexit at all, and she has also warned pro Remain MPs, that voting down her deal will lead to the worst case scenario of a No Deal Brexit, in which the UK has to rely on the World Trade Organisation rules to get goods in and out of the EU, its biggest market.

Skillfully she has found a third side of her mouth to speak out of and sometimes warned of both simultaneously.

Southgate however has kickstarted a debate among football fans but many on the Remain side will perhaps wish he had done so two years earlier.