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Timo Fleckenstein

By Timo Fleckenstein, associate professor of social policy at the London School of Economics

The difference could not be starker between the lives of football millionaires in the English Premier League and experience of those at the bottom of society – especially during the COVID-19 crisis, which has increased economic hardship to extreme levels.

It is estimated that about one in three children in the UK grow up in poverty – these are 4.1 million young lives scarred by the experience of poverty. Parents of an estimated 2.5 million children worry about putting adequate food on their table, and about 8 million people in the UK are thought to live in food poverty.

For poor families, free school meals and breakfast clubs are quite literally a lifeline that prevents their children from going hungry – a lifeline that is not available when the doors of schools are closed.

Young Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford knows far too well how poverty feels. Now 23, he grew up in one of Manchester’s most deprived neighborhoods; his mother, as a single parent, needed to pursue multiple jobs to support the family. Still, this was not always good enough, and she sometimes had to skip meals herself to leave enough food for Marcus and his older siblings.

This experience has profoundly shaped the Manchester United striker, who has developed during the COVID-19 pandemic into a highly effective social campaigner putting fear into the conservative government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Rashford earned recognition when setting up a charity supporting the homeless. During the first national lockdown last year, he used his stardom to boost a food poverty charity that supported children with meals during the school closure. They quickly raised £20 million, and their target of supporting 400,000 children in the Manchester area turned into more than 12 million meals for poor children nationwide – a phenomenal success.

The footballer did not stop there. In an open letter, he urged the conservative government to extend a free-school voucher scheme for needy children over the summer vacation when schools were closed. The prime minister’s office promptly rejected the call to provide the £15-per-week vouchers during summer, and ministers were sent out to defend the indefensible.

The government clearly underestimated the footballer’s popularity and the reach of his Twitter account. Growing public disbelief and outrage on the conservative back benches forced the government into an embarrassing U-turn within 24 hours. The summer food fund was established, and the prime minister found himself calling the young footballer to thank him for campaigning for struggling families during the pandemic.

Commentators called Rashford’s campaigning for free-school-meal vouchers a “political master class” – and a formidable social campaigner was born!

The striker went on to establish a Child Food Poverty Task Force that included major supermarkets, and he called out the Chancellor of the Exchequer for failing to extend support for families on benefits. Rashford expressed his disappointment over the government’s lack of empathy for the poorest families in the country. To increase public pressure on government, he launched an e-petition calling for a comprehensive policy package to end child poverty.

So far, the petition has attracted more than 1.1 million signatures, and again Rashford has forced the conservatives into action. Most recently, he embarrassed the government when pointing out the inadequacy of the “food hampers” for poor children, which replaced the free school meal vouchers. Again, Boris Johnson’s government agenda was set by the footballer not only “striking” for Manchester United, but also for poor children across the country.

Having mastered the use of social media, Rashford seems to outsmart the government repeatedly, just as he dominates his opponents on the football pitch. (His team Manchester United currently leads the Premier League.)

Conservative MPs are fuming over their government’s U-turns and their inability to develop an effective strategy to deal with the footballer – who, some argue, holds government to account more effectively than Her Majesty’s Official Opposition in Parliament. Admittedly, this might do the Labour Party and its new leader Sir Keir Starmer an injustice, but it is difficult to deny that Rashford has achieved policy change the opposition could not put through.

It is indeed astonishing how a 23-year-old footballer, driven by his own life story and a strong sense of social justice, has developed authority in British politics and successfully challenged the most powerful in the land. He certainly presents an exceptional example of social responsibility – coming from a profession that is, off the pitch, rather associated with supercars and lavish parties.

Certainly, one might view today’s celebrity culture and the omnipresence of social media with some skepticism. But it is all the more refreshing when one sees stardom not being used for commercial interests, but for advancement of the interests of those who are poorly represented in the public – those without voice. And one can only hope that others will follow Marcus Rashford’s example.

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