We keep being told that Britain is broken. Tell that to the Lionesses, twice European champions, who don’t know the meaning of “submission”, “pessimism” or “defeat”. They only led for just over four minutes during the knock-out stage of the Euros in Switzerland and were widely denounced after they lost their opening game to France. Their defender Jess Carter, who starred in the final against the world champions, Spain, endured sustained online racist abuse, but the support she received from her teammates and the Football Association was overwhelming. Before the tournament began, reports suggested that there were divisions in the squad and internal resistance to the Dutch coach, Sarina Wiegman. Mary Earps, the 2023 BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and Millie Bright, a former captain, had made themselves unavailable for selection after being told they were no longer guaranteed first-team starters. But Wiegman knew what she was doing. The Lionesses are much more than a team of 11 named individuals: they are a squad, defined by an ethos, representing a nation.
Patriotic players
Throughout the tournament, they were defined by the resilience of their system, their determination and unabashed patriotism. “I’m so grateful to wear the badge. So proud to be English,” said Chloe Kelly, in the immediate aftermath of victory in Basel. She had scored the decisive penalty in the nerve-shredding shoot-out, just as she had scored the extra-time winner at Wembley in 2022, when the Lionesses won their first European Championship title. “We’ve got that grit, that English blood in us. We never say die,” said goalkeeper Hannah Hampton, who made two penalty saves to deny Spain. Churchill would have approved of her rhetoric.
Which England do you believe in? The England of the cowardly anonymous online haters, the broken-Britain doomsters, the political defeatists. Or the England of the Lionesses: united in their diversity, committed to a plan, never entitled but resolute to the last, and powered by a belief in the common good. Keir Starmer, who likes football, would do well to study their example.
Keir Starmer’s search for a story
One writer who has thought more deeply than most about the condition of England is James Graham, author of the play Dear England, which explores how Gareth Southgate changed the culture of the England men’s football team and attempted to conquer their collective fear of the penalty shoot-out – something evidently not shared by the Lionesses. Dear England is being adapted into a four-part BBC series. One recent morning I had coffee with Graham at his house in south-east London and, as we chatted in the garden, we turned to Southgate, but also Starmer’s Labour.
Graham is a storyteller and believes the most successful politicians, business leaders and sports coaches are exemplary storytellers as well. Starmer is a leader in search of a story, Graham said. “They need one and don’t have one. You could see one threatening to emerge before the election – the stuff about national renewal, which I endorsed. It could have been a transformative moment, like 1945 and 1979, but it isn’t, is it?” He referenced Margaret Thatcher, whom he had recently written a TV play about, Brian and Maggie, directed by Stephen Frears. “By 1981, she was the most unpopular prime minister since the Second World War, and yet she changed the nation in a decade.” What does this tell us, I asked? “That there’s still time, but not much.”
A new party of the left
Meanwhile, a new left party is struggling to be born under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, both MPs, both estranged from their old party. I was interested to read Andrew Murray’s recent New Statesman piece about the unnamed party. Murray is a former chief of staff to Len McCluskey at Unite and senior adviser to Corbyn when he was Labour leader. As a communist, he comes from outside the Labour Party, and yet I always found him to be one of most thoughtful and approachable of the Corbynites. He has a theory of history and was an influential leader of the Stop the War movement; he also has a nice, dry sense of humour. He wrote that 400 people a minute were registering for Corbyn’s party and 40 a minute were making donations. I’ve long believed there’s space for a new party to Labour’s left, perhaps aligned to the progressivist Greens, and although I don’t share its politics, I welcome its arrival. Let a hundred flowers bloom, as Murray didn’t quite say in his piece.
[See also: The Lionesses make it cool to be English]
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This article appears in the 30 Jul 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Summer of Discontent