Gary Neville says he wouldn’t trust Boris Johnson to be his postman, claiming he “wouldn’t want him to be somebody who held a position of authority or responsibility in my life”.
In an article for left-wing magazine Tribune, Neville said the prime minister is letting down “workers in this country at every single level”.
Johnson “doesn’t just take down people within his own team, his closest aides, which we’ve seen in the last week, the last month, and the last eighteen months—he’s taking us all down.”
Addressing his increasingly political online interventions, the former Manchester United star said his newfound activism “hasn’t been born out of any particular movement”.
Instead, he said, “it’s born out of the fact that I see our leadership at this moment as a real danger, and something that doesn’t reflect well upon us as the team in this country that are being led by him.”
“I’m furious—and I’m not furious about Boris Johnson’s mistakes,” Neville wrote. “He makes too many, let’s be clear, and it’s not ideal if you make too many mistakes in the position that he’s in. I do believe that he is leading in a very difficult time.
“But it’s the fact that he doesn’t own up to his mistakes that concerns me. He doesn’t accept his mistakes. He doesn’t take responsibility. In fact, it’s worse than that: he pushes the blame onto everybody else.”
He added: “The anger that I have at the moment is that this guy can’t tell the truth. Not only that: his ministers who are in the highest positions in government have to lie for him. And it’s all going to come down like one almighty house of cards in the next week, the next month, or the next six months—because this is unsustainable.”
Neville said it was time for the prime minister to step down. “We have to change the leader of this country very quickly, because we are regressing. A change of politics, a change of leadership, a change of thinking.”
He wrote: “I speak at times with a bit of emotion, because I’ve found myself getting angrier. Do I feel like getting drawn into politics? Sometimes I do get a bit of an itch. Once I got to the door though I’d probably have a peep through and think, ‘Not sure about that.’
“But I do feel passionate about what’s happening at this moment in time. You can’t fight a fair fight with these people. You have to make sure that you do everything you can to beat them. You have to find a way to win, because I think he’s damaging all of us—not just in this country, but all around the world.”
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