Cod Almighty | Diary
Sack the government - let Grimsby Town run the country
24 June 2025
When Newbegin Diary was a boy in the early 1970s, there were footballers who had started their careers under the maximum wage. The limit to their earnings meant that many promising players opted against turning professional if they also had the option of going to college. It left a bit of a perception that footballers were thick, a view popularised by the parodies of the interviews they gave: "sick as a parrot", "over the moon", "I hit the ball first time, and there it was in the back of the net". By contrast, in those days politicians at least pretended to be erudite.
It all started to change sometime in the 1980s, when the eloquence of Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labour Party, was dismissed (with some justification, it must be admitted) as windbaggery. Nowadays, if they aren't actually thick, they pretend to be. Meanwhile, footballers like Doug Tharme discuss their jobs with enviable emotional intelligence.
The politicians are probably as bad at football as they are at running the country, but at a time when they seem only capable of pandering to angry and bitter old men intent on endangering the world, having these people sitting round the cabinet table would be reassuring.
Defence: Doug Tharme, obviously, and if he did it on a job-share with the psychology student Josh Gowling it would be a useful demonstration that the world of work needs to evolve
Culture, Media and Sport: Martin Gritton has more than once had the excellent taste to commend the writing of Cod Almighty. He conveyed that sense of having a knowledge and interest in the wider world which we would once have expected from MPs.
Housing and Communities: Graham Rodger, a football in the community officer who would just quietly get on with the job of building the houses we actually need (as opposed to the ones private housebuilders try to sell) in the same unsung manner that he used to pop up at corners to rescue a point.
Foreign Office: At Braintree, Pádraig Amond proved he was a great man in a crisis.
Home Office: Jason Svanthórsson's brief would be very simple: to run around a football pitch trying things the rest of us wouldn't dare, a reminder that we are enriched by people from other cultures.
Health and Social Care: the sight of Gavan Holohan preparing to take a penalty is good for everyone's health and wellbeing.
Work and Pensions: A safety net for Town in the difficult years between Dave Booth and Alan Buckley, Don O'Riordan was an embodiment of the dignity of labour.
Treasury: The stereotype is that ex-footballers struggle to adjust to the demands of ordinary life. Steve Sherwood built a new career in financial services he said he found every bit as fascinating as defying Exeter in 1991 when our promotion hopes were on the line.
Cabinet Office: No one is quite sure what the Cabinet Office does, but every government needs a Cabinet Office minister, just as every half-decent football club needs a Paul Groves.
Education: Every interview with Neil Woods is an education on how to bring into the world mature, well-adjusted people. Also Deputy Prime Minister: he had a brief time in the top job but it wasn't for him.
Prime Minister: Alan Buckley may not be a man you automatically associate with the touchy-feely stuff, but read again the wonderful honesty and acute insight of the last pages of his autobiography, Pass and Move. Buckley does come from that earlier age, when footballers weren't expected to open up about their feelings. Those feelings were still there though, proof that there is more than one kind of intelligence.