In May 2021, Andrew Pettit and I took on what would prove to be one of the hardest challenges of our lives when we bought our home-town club, Grimsby Town. The difficulty wasn’t just in turning the club around, it was in grappling with an economic system that simply doesn’t work. Most importantly, and unlike the business world we come from, the stakeholders are not abstracted customers but our family, friends and the wider community of which we are part.
Football isn’t just a game, it offers a sense of history, rootedness and connection far beyond what happens for 90 minutes on any given Saturday. It’s a crucible for human stories, a reflection of society and an arena where ambition, frustration, identity and community collide.
This sense of identity is not only shaped by who we are but by what we oppose. Opposition, in sport and in life, can provide clarity and purpose, but the way in which we engage with those we oppose defines us. Holding different views or challenging authority is essential for progress in our politics as well. When opposition descends into “othering”, it diminishes everyone. It’s not just harmful to those we target but it erodes our own humanity.
This perspective is what led to me buying into the club and helping with the other community projects in our town and it has now influenced my decision to venture into politics. Over the past decade, the divisiveness of political debate has disturbed and frustrated me. The ability to build a better future depends on how well we can come together, even when we disagree.
Football and politics share a profound paradox because they demand results in the present while striving for transformation in the future. In football, this tension shapes how we approach every match and decision. Success and failure are often found in those small pauses in our breath that deliver the joy of promotion, the agony of relegation, the ecstasy of a last-minute winner. But when we inhale deeply, we feel the whole history of our club enter our lungs and bones and become part of us.
The same is true in politics. While a losing run on the pitch can lead to calls for a manager’s dismissal or for the owners to ship out, a dip in the polls can force governments to abandon long-term reforms and focus on short-term fixes and headlines. Performance overshadows transformation. The real question is whether leaders can find the courage and conviction to build for the future while managing the pressures of the present. And more importantly, can we, as fans and citizens, grant them the patience and space to do so? In our age of instant gratification, instant outrage and social media scrutiny, this patience is often in short supply. Yet without it, we undermine the very progress we all need to address the challenges of this century.
This tension mirrors a broader societal struggle. For many, pride and purpose have been eroded by economic instability and a narrative that progress means uprooting from where we are born. The push to send more and more people away from home to university, though well-meaning, has often overlooked the value of alternative paths in life; paths that are vital to a functioning society and those who want to stay in the places where they were born and commit to a future there. As Michael Sandel argues in his critique of the “rhetoric of rising”, tying individual worth solely to upward mobility through academic achievement has left many saddled with debt and struggling to find a foothold in a fragmented job market. In this context, football clubs become more than teams, they are symbols of permanence and anchor our sense of belonging in a changing world. They often counteract the alienation of modern life by offering an identity rooted not only in professional success but in our connection to a place, memory and collective effort.
The leaders we need, whether in football or politics, understand that progress is rarely linear. Transformation is messy, slow and often unpopular. It demands the courage to fail and the vision to stay the course, even when results are disappointing. In football, this may mean trusting a manager or player to develop despite setbacks. In politics, it’s about prioritising policies that may take years to bear fruit over short-term sticking plasters. It’s about allowing leaders to speak openly and recover from mistakes without fear of being cancelled. True transformation requires a tolerance for imperfection and a willingness to trust the process, even when the outcomes aren’t immediately visible.
Devolution, to me, represents the ultimate opportunity to put these principles into action; the need to show immediate value by better near-term decisions while creating a hopeful vision of the future that people want to help create and inhabit. It’s not just about transferring power from Whitehall but about fostering pride, a sense of fairness and ownership for local communities. In a world increasingly defined by digital disconnection and geographic mobility, this sense of rootedness in place has never been more important.
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Football has shown me that success isn’t about quick wins. It’s about the relentless, collective effort to achieve an aligned vision of the future. If this is the final article I write on these topics, it’s not because I’m done with football but because I want to focus my energy on the local political landscape, having won the nomination to be the Labour party’s candidate for the new role of Greater Lincolnshire mayor. Whatever the outcome, I came to the conclusion that it’s not enough just to write about these things, at some point you’ve got to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. Because in the end, you have to ask yourself the question, are you happy standing back and commenting or will you step forward to try to make things happen?
Jason Stockwood is the Labour and Co-op candidate for Greater Lincolnshire mayor.
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Source: theguardian.com
