So close: Gareth Southgate, right, with England captain Harry Kane after the Euro 2024 final and the shattering defeat to Spain
Former Crystal Palace captain receives a knighthood after eight years of reviving the fortunes of the England football team, while snide Tory MP Chris Philp earns himself a gong for hypocrisy
Gareth Southgate, who arrived at Selhurst Park as a shy and toothy teenager and transformed himself into an international centre-back, has been knighted in the New Year’s Honours list for his service in transforming the fortunes of the England men’s football team.
Sir Gareth is among several figures with links to Croydon and south London to feature in the honours list.
Final chance: Gareth Southgate at last summer’s tournament
The 54-year-old led England to consecutive European Championship finals and the 2018 World Cup semi-finals during his eight years in charge, before stepping down after the heart-breaking 2-1 loss to Spain in the Euro 2024 final.
Sir Gareth follows Sir Alf Ramsey, who famously led England’s 1966 World Cup-winning team, Sir Walter Winterbottom and Sir Bobby Robson, as England managers to receive knighthoods.
The New Year Honours are awarded by the King, following recommendations by the prime minister or senior government ministers. Members of the public can also recommend people for an award.
Several serving officers in the Metropolitan Police were given honours.
Honoured: Zoe Harris is paid £100,000 per year for doing her job. She gets an MBE
The King’s Police Medal is awarded to Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist and to Inspector Mark O’Dell.
O’Dell’s citation states: “For Distinguished Service to Policing recognising 18 years of service to the community of Croydon as a frontline incident manager, and for supporting fellow officers to tackle trauma and PTSD.”
Other Croydon recipients include an MBE for Zoe Harris, who for the past three years has worked as the £100,000 per year chief executive of the Pace Academy Trust – primary schools including Keston, Chipstead Valley and New Valley in Old Coulsdon.
Harris gets her gong for “services to education”.
Some of the Honours attracted a welter of criticism from figures on the right of politics, after they had spent nearly a decade and a half handing out baubles and medals to their mates and families.
Chief among their targets today has been London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who receives a knighthood.
Sir Sadiq, the son of a bus driver and the first Muslim to be elected mayor of a major western city, said he is “truly humbled” to receive a knighthood.
“I couldn’t have dreamed when growing up on a council estate in south London that I’d one day be Mayor of London. It’s the honour of my life to serve the city I love,” Sir Sadiq said.
In May, Khan won the London Mayor elections for a third time. In the Midlands, Tory Andy Street lost the mayoralty there, although he, too, has received a knighthood in the 2025 New Year’s Honours.
Honoured: Sir Sadiq Khan
That hasn’t stopped far-right figures, and Croydon South’s Conservative MP Chris Philp, seeking to politicise the honours, calling Sir Sadiq’s knighthood a “reward for failure”.
Professional rent-a-gob Philp cited levels of knife crime in London and missed housing targets as among the Mayor’s failures.
Philp said: “Under Sadiq Khan, Londoners have faced a 61% increase in knife crime, a housing crisis and a 70% increase in Council Tax – they will rightly be furious his track record of failure is being rewarded.
“By rewarding the failing Sadiq Khan, Keir Starmer has shown once again that for Labour it is party first, country second.”
In 2021, after Conservative Shaun Bailey lost that year’s London Mayor election, he was rewarded for his failure by being given a seat in the House of Lords.
Philp, of course, was also a front bench member of the Liz Truss government that crashed the national economy in record time. While Truss set other records for the shortest term as Prime Minister, it did not stop her naming 14 people in her resignation honours list. Philp said nothing about “rewards for failure” or “party first, country second” then.
Now, if there were honours for hypocrisy…
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