Southgate Doc on Boys Sidesteps Political Root Causes
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- Gareth Southgate's BBC documentary "Changing the Game for Young Men" aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer, examining how Britain is failing a generation of demotivated young males
- In Middlesbrough, Southgate met three unemployed men aged 19-20 facing hundreds of applicants per vacancy with little feedback; one said he had to snap himself out of suicidal thoughts
- The documentary features a prison segment where Southgate tells inmates—who came from circumstances like the Middlesbrough men and turned to crime—that they can still shape their future: "I ended up managing England!"
- The film showcases a school scheme where male teachers run extracurricular classes allowing boys to discuss emotions and ambitions, addressing the absence of male mentors and the over-rapid labelling of struggling boys as troublemakers
- The reviewer argues the documentary offers only "politics with a lower-case p," noting that a proposed national home-insulation scheme would give those Middlesbrough boys jobs—yet austerity-driven underfunding is never named as the core issue
- The closing segment highlights grassroots community organising, including a volunteer environmental project for one of the Middlesbrough men and Hitchin Town FC's Dan Gaze, whose after-school schemes keep boys out of mischief
Why it matters: Southgate's documentary reaches a mainstream BBC audience with genuine empathy and skill, but substitutes personal uplift—mentors, volunteering, pep talks—for the structural diagnosis the subjects themselves are making: the industries that employed their parents were "deliberately not replaced." The contrast between what Southgate offers (comradeship and a volunteering day) and what one 19-year-old says he needs (a job) exposes the gap in celebrity-led social commentary on deindustrialised Britain.
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