Some have speculated he may run to succeed Andy Burnham as mayor of Greater Manchester
Gary Neville, the footballer turned TV pundit, hotelier, property developer and
university founder, has joined the Labour party and has not definitively ruled out a future career in politics.
Neville, regularly a fierce critic of Boris Johnson on Twitter, revealed to Nick Robinson’s
BBC Political Thinking podcast that he had joined the party in the last few days.
“That is purely for myself,” he said. “I want to support
Labour. I do believe that we need a progressive Labour party but one that not just looks after the left side … it has to come towards the centre.”
Robinson asked Neville whether he would consider a career in politics, to which he replied: “I say to myself sometimes ‘I’m able to communicate. I know what I want. I have got a business mind, I can manage people.’ But I just think I’d get eaten alive. I don’t know what Whitehall’s like, what Westminster’s like, I can only imagine what you have to do there to survive and I don’t play the game. So how can I get in?