Nine middle-aged gammons slam ‘wh*re’ Gary Neville as ‘champagne socialist’ is reminded he’s white too
Manchester United legend Gary Neville has made a lot of middle-aged white men angry by making a fair point about division in the UK and beyond.
Neville has come in for a lot of stick over the last week with the Daily Mail’s reporting of his comments particularly concerning as they described them as a ‘racist’ outburst.
Despite the former Man Utd and England defender making a wider point condemning “hate speech in any form and abuse in any form” and urging everyone to unite “to get back to a country of love, of peace, of harmony”, they have predictably been dragged out of context in certain quarters.
Obviously Neville’s view lamenting “the division that’s being created…mainly by angry, middle-aged white men who know exactly what they’re doing” have taken all of the headlines with middle-aged white men particularly enraged by the Sky Sports pundit and businessman.
Here we have put together nine of the best, worst, and honestly most terrifying views on Neville’s comments this week…
Joey Barton
“In his, obviously, isolated world he lives in, he’s in the kind of ivory tower position of being shuttled into a Sky studio, back behind a wall in whatever sprawling estate he’s got, they’re saying he’s worth between £50m and £70m. People are telling me that Overlap earns all them £20,000 a pop, they’re sponsored by ARNE now so surely ARNE’s going to be delighted with Gary saying that because I would imagine their target audience is white, middle-class men. It’s definitely not fella’s called Jihad, white, middle-class men called Jihad. I can’t imagine there being that many of them around.
“But Gary’s got himself into this virtue signalling nonsense. We have this pillock, Neville, and he’s crossed over with me because as I said to him and Rio last night, I’m more than welcome to debate both of you. Let’s roll for two hours, discuss any topic. Gary sat in a room with me when we did The Edge podcast, you don’t need to be scared of me, but intellectually I think you’ve got a lot to answer for here.
“I don’t think Gary Neville has thought about who are his audience. Because I’m looking at it going, you’ve just said people who like the Union Jack, people who are patriotic to show their country’s flag in, in this instance, the country he’s from and represented 85 times at international level…just factor in if he said somebody with brown skin or somebody with black skin, there’d be an absolute outrage about it.”
The delightful Barton added: “People like this, gaslighting you all the time, saying to you: ‘no, no you’re a racist for thinking that. You’re far right for thinking that.’ There’s a synagogue attacked and we get a f*****g d***head footballer, absolute idiot, whose ar**hole is for rent to the highest bidder.
“If that’s the Qataris, he’ll forget anything to do with human rights to go and take the Qatari money. He is a whore who is open for exploitation as he has shown this weekend with his stupid comments.
“Now, if he was a man of the people, like he says he was, and if he was really in touch with his fanbase or the people that support his shows or his football club or some of his businesses, then he would know middle-aged white men in this country aren’t the problem.
“Sticking a few flags up and being petrified that your daughters or your granddaughters or your wife are going to be accosted in a changing room by an illegal invader is not a f*****g far right position.”
READ: Neville a ‘traitor’ and Postecoglou sack imminent to bafflement of Daily Mail
Simon Jordan
“I think it’s astonishing in the wake of an Islamist terror attack that he decides to have a go at middle-aged white men.
“Maybe the middle-aged white men are the ones who worked on minimum wage inside his hotel, I don’t know. I think he’s a champagne socialist and a coward. It’s a dreadful thing to have said.”
Pushed on why Neville is a coward, Jordan went on: “I think the real issue is about radical Islamist extremism and he doesn’t have the balls to call it out for what it is, rather than suggest that challenging our country about what’s happening, he’s insulated from these things.
“He lives in a very rarefied world where his money and privilege has allowed him to live in a gated environment, not have to worry about NHS appointments, doesn’t have to worry about people being attacked in the streets by immigrants that shouldn’t be here in the first place.
“He doesn’t have to worry about these things, so he has the ability to sit there and observe in such a way that insulates himself from it. I think it’s an appalling stance to have taken.
“He’s entitled to his view, he’s entitled to a view. We are quite happy to wave any other flag in this country, whether it’s Palestinian flags, Ukraine flags or any other flag that we feel we’re able to wave.
“But when you’re talking about people in this country that have legitimate concerns and want to have a legitimate value set and push back against what they’re having forced upon them, for Gary Neville to say what he said is the exact embodiment of being a champagne socialist, insulated from the real world and a coward because the real issue is some of the extremism going on in this country.”
Matt Le Tissier
Le Tissier told students at Southampton Solent University: “He’s basically attacked the demographic of people that are paying his wages, which is a bit strange.
“I think it depends on what side of the argument you fall on and whether your side of the argument suits the agenda of the current media.
“Which I think, you know, for the large part is very left leaning, so if you’re slightly right leaning you won’t be given the good graces to make mistakes other people will be given.”
The Southampton legend added: “Yeah, I think they’ll stand by him and support him, yeah
“I mean, they stood by Jamie Carragher when he spat at a young girl out of the back of his car.
“It is not quite as bad as that, so I think Gary’s got a pretty fair argument there if they try and get rid of him.”
Nigel Farage
“He’s blaming ‘middle-aged white men’, the people who actually pay for Sky Sports, pay his salary.
“He’s blaming them for all the division, not some evil, crazed, mad Islamist who went out to kill innocent people.”
Farage added: “I will tell you what, this Gary Neville is so detached from reality, so detached from the average football fan, it is not true.
“I am amazed that Sky Sports keep him on.”
READ: Neville ‘tantrums’ ‘won’t stop until he’s taken off Sky Sports and his Overlap podcast’
Jeremy Kyle
“I’m sorry — I know I tell you every week I’m gonna come here and I’m gonna be calm. We’re being told that we’re being turned against each other mainly by angry middle-aged white men who deem it OK to put up flags.
“I’m not gonna sit here and say stick to football, everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but why am I surrounded by people like Neville who have made millions on the back of working-class people — people they’re supposed to represent, people they’re supposed to respect?”
Kyle added: “Does he actually believe that middle-aged white men raising flags is causing division in this country?
“Three hours after those poor, poor Jewish people on Yom Kippur were murdered by that terrorist called Jihad… a protest march not three hours later, not a mile away, with people waving Palestinian flags and shouting obscenities — but Gary Neville wouldn’t mention that, would he?
“But if you stood up and said it’s disgraceful that these people are marching and inciting violence, people like Neville would say, ‘Oh but it’s unfair.’ But it’s alright to attack middle-aged white men.”
Kyle continued: “I tell you what Gary Neville, do two things: take your fortune and give it to every immigrant and every group that you think isn’t treated well in this country — do that, but you won’t, will you?
“Or go and live somewhere, you numpty, where there are immigrants on the streets and where your teenage daughters might not feel safe, rather than behind the gates of your massive mansion in Chester.”
Oliver Brown, Daily Telegraph Chief Sports Writer
‘We need to check ourselves, start to bring ourselves back to a neutral point,” he says, playing the great healer. After all, nothing says neutrality quite like blaming the toxicity exclusively on “angry middle-aged white men”.
‘How strange that Neville should disdain these people – the type who work on his building sites, who seek an escape from the daily grind by paying the Sky Sports subscriptions that support his seven-figure salary – as some unspeakable sub-group of society.
‘Neville is the classic case of a celebrity so feted within his own sport that he appears oblivious to anything or anybody who might challenge his world view. Gary Lineker fell into the same trap…
‘Neville is discovering the hard way that views that resonate inside his self-congratulatory pundit bubble often collapse on first contact with reality. Hence why his latest video has provoked less applause than derision and contempt, with increasing threats from viewers to stop paying for Sky in protest. Perhaps now he realises that if you are going to posture as the voice of balance and reason, you cannot savage the flying of the Union Flag as divisive and then fail even to mention the Palestine Action protests that took place directly after the Manchester outrage, in defiance of calls to show respect to the Jewish community.
‘It is doubly bizarre that Neville invokes his patriotism with the old “I’ve played 85 times for my country” line. These honours, earned from 1995 to 2007, were achieved purely on the strength of his sporting talent, not because of his undying devotion to Queen and country. So why does he now feel an entitlement to define patriotic allegiance for everyone else? The answer, quite simply, is hubris. Neville acts as if his position as the country’s most prominent football analyst also confers the right to be its conscience.
‘His response to the atrocity in his home city might be his most dangerous lapse into self-parody yet. The problem is not just the hopelessly mangled logic, with Neville drawing a line from the act of an Islamist terrorist to enthusiasm for the Union Flag, but that he is biting the hand that feeds. Why is he belittling his own audience? Why does he not pause to consider that he has strayed so far out of his lane that he is practically in the ditch? The problem, hardly for the first time, is not angry middle-aged white men, but multimillionaires called Gary deluded into presuming that their football credentials give them a monopoly on moral virtue.’
READ: Sky Sports make sack decision over ‘deluded’ Gary Neville and his ”racist’ outburst
Ross Clark, journalist for The Sun
‘THERE was a time, presumably, when Gary Neville wasn’t quite so offended by the sight of our national flags as he now appears to be.
‘When he was playing his 85 games for England I don’t remember him storming up into the stands to rip down St George’s Crosses or Union Jacks waved by enthusiastic fans, nor objecting to men, women and children who joined in the fun by painting red crosses on their faces.’
Clark added: ‘In a video he posted online he boasted of how he had ordered a Union Flag put up by construction workers at a block of flats his company is building in Manchester to be taken down.
‘To justify his actions, he claimed that the flag is being used by “angry middle-aged white men” in a “negative fashion”.
‘Quite how you fly a Union Flag negatively I am not sure.’
Clark continued: ‘So, no, we have no reason to be ashamed of our flag.
‘On the contrary, we have every reason to fly it proudly from our homes and workplaces — if only the likes of Gary Neville will let us.’
Simon Evans, Spiked columnist
‘It seems it’s now open season on middle-aged white blokes, all year round. We are the opposite of a protected species. Scape-gammon, if you will. No one will call Neville out on his bigotry, or indeed hypocrisy, as he forgets who paid for the lifestyle he’s enjoyed since the Major years.
‘Neville didn’t just raise a few questions – he also took a wild leap into scape-squirrel territory. He blamed flag-waving middle-aged white men for murders committed by a terrorist literally called Jihad.’
Stephen Pollard, Telegraph
‘It seems that in modern Britain you can be anything but the dreaded “middle-aged white man” (a description which, it should be noted, also applies to Neville).’
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