Your dad doesn’t believe in astrology. “What nonsense,” he mutters as he flicks past the horoscopes in the weekend papers. But for him, the stars have very much aligned. A sensible, centrist Labour Party is on course to obliterate the Conservatives in next week’s general election. This week is Glastonbury – maybe he’s locked in a posh yurt on site; maybe he plans to catch Keane and PJ Harvey on TV in between bouts of gardening. And the Euros are on. England might have crawled into the knockout stages in their usual style – uncertain and uninspiring – but he can’t help cueing up “Three Lions” on the kitchen Sonos. This summer is his summer. It’s a hot, centrist, football dad summer. With plenty of water and suncream.
Your dad has three men to thank for these blissful weeks – a time that has been termed “Barbenheimer for centrist dads”. One is Rishi Sunak, for inexplicably calling an election so early. More important are the other two: Keir Starmer and Gareth Southgate. Many politicians are dads, but none of them are dads on such a spiritual level as 61-year-old Starmer. The small silver quiff. The carefully fashionable black-rimmed glasses. The stern look, on one of Labour’s main election posters, that says he’s not sure whether to believe your claim that there were already only four bottles of beer in the fridge before he went out.
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Starmer’s musical tastes, as revealed on a 2020 episode of Desert Island Discs, are pure dad: a bit of Beethoven, a bit of northern soul and – naturally – “Three Lions”. And like a lot of dads, Starmer is a bit buttoned up. He recently told the Guardian that he “never really thought about” being an introvert or an extrovert; that he doesn’t dream; that he wasn’t scared of anything as a child and that he doesn’t have favourite novel or poem. “I hate these quick-fire questions, they are a bugbear to me,” he told the Financial Times in another interview. “You can’t reduce everything to yes/no answers.” But this vibe – or anti-vibe – has resonated. Dads (and mums) have flocked to Starmer’s Labour Party. At the 2019 election, the age after which people were more likely to vote Tory than Labour was 39. Now it’s around 70.
A lot of politicians invent or exaggerate a love of football to try and win over voters. David Cameron once confused Aston Villa, the team he said he supported, with West Ham. But for Starmer, it's very real. He’s a longtime Arsenal season ticket holder, and still plays eight-a-side games near his home in north London. According to his biographer Tom Baldwin, he “can usually be seen outside the changing rooms, pacing up and down, impatiently awaiting late arrivals”. Football is his release: when he’s playing, it’s “all I’m thinking about”, he says. “Totally all in.” And Starmer’s off-duty style – a Sandro hoodie-jacket hybrid; a black Stone Island polo shirt – is very much that of someone who learned about fashion on the terraces.
Centrist dad hero number two is Southgate. There are obvious similarities. Both middle-aged men (Southgate is 53) are controlled, even severe at times. Both have been accused of blandness, and of playing it safe tactically, whether on the pitch or politically. And both have outperformed their predecessors: Southgate with a World Cup semi-final in 2018 and a Euros final in 2021, and Starmer with a 20ish-point poll lead. When they both went to dinner with the King at Windsor Castle last April, they probably exchanged thoughtful leadership advice (which Starmer has also sought from former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger) and matey banter about old England games. If they started a podcast, your dad would get very excited.
Football; soft, squishy patriotism; careful change; sober leadership – the Starmer-Southgate model is perfect for winning over the middle-aged voters that Labour need to get into power. And it all came together in a video the party released last week, of Starmer ambling through the Lake District with Gary Neville. The footballer-turned-Labour-member serves up easy questions as Starmer wafts out phrases previously used by your dad to encourage you while revising: “action, not words”; “sleeves rolled up”. For a certain audience, it must have gone down like a cold Peroni on a summer’s day. And can we really begrudge our dads their fun? Surely not. As least they’ll have election night to look forward to when England fall apart in the round of 16.
