Gary Neville fuming with “immoral” politicians feeding Manchester’s inequality crisis

“I think it’s okay to be offended by Manchester not having enough affordable housing and also not having high class luxury accommodation…

“I’m offended by both.”

Gary Neville is a red, and will always be a red and that attitude goes way beyond football.

He’s passionate about where he comes from, where he lives (in Greater Manchester) and he wants to invest back into that part of the country. And he’s making a case for having concerns at both ends of the social spectrum.

“Why should the people of Manchester have to go to Paris or London to experience five-star hospitality and service? We should be able to get it in our city.”

He’s ‘offended by the fact that we can’t raise the standards at the highest level and the fact that we can’t look after people and make sure that everyone’s got a house to be able to live in that’s of a comfortable size and in the area they want to live in.’

Bury born Neville doesn’t really like the word ‘entrepreneur’ as he feels it’s ‘a little a bit wankerish’, but the fact remains; he is one of the city’s most prolific business leaders of the last decade – especially since retiring from playing football in 2011.

The scale of Neville’s business portfolio as a CEO and chairman is astounding. Nevertheless, confessing on a recent episode of The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett, he says the word makes his ‘skin crawl a little bit’.

The former Manchester United captain is the CEO of a multiverse of operations such as Hotel Football, Stock Exchange Hotel, Salford City Football Club, St Michael’s Manchester development, a project management consultancy; and the list goes on. The one constant is that the heart of all his businesses are in Greater Manchester. In Salford, Trafford and Manchester city centre, and he feels ‘very focused in my investments around that.’

All his businesses are startups and he says ‘it’s the [building] teams part of it’ that he loves the most.

Without question, Neville is first and foremost known as a football legend and entrepreneur second but transferring his skills from the field into the business landscape, he’s also a man who isn’t afraid to speak up for the greater good of his people.

He’s night and day when it comes to both business and equal rights. Despite no interest in a career in politics as he feels he ‘could have a greater influence in Greater Manchester’ and wants to ‘try to influence things in the private sector away from the public sector’, Mr Neville has become quite political on social media about social issues and using his voice to shed light on things that are going wrong in politics.

“It’s not acceptable to be quiet anymore if you’re in a position of influence and if you’ve seen something that’s wrong…

“We’ve been conditioned to think that you can’t be in the Labour party *and* be entrepreneurial… And it’s only the Tory party that is good for business… The Labour party *have* to change that perception…”

Despite being a business leader himself with no interest in politics, he believes that ‘politicians should be the highest quality of business people and entrepreneurs to be able to deliver the plan that we all want.’

“He’s right,” says Steven Bartlett. “If there isn’t that supply there for the high end then the economy is going to suffer, because it [Manchester] won’t attract business, it won’t attract investment into the city if the standards aren’t there.”

Neville joined the Labour party earlier this year because he doesn’t get why he ‘can’t fight for people who can’t afford their energy bills this winter just because we have a bank account that’s more than people would like it to be’

In a recent exclusive interview with The Mirror, Gary Neville slammed Tory tax cuts for the rich as “immoral” and “madness”.

You’re right, @GNev2, they truly are. pic.twitter.com/8kGXrYTG3C

— Andy Burnham (@AndyBurnhamGM) September 25, 2022

The ‘well-off’ entrepreneur bashed the plans to give billions to the rich as he prepared to make a star appearance at the Labour Party conference tomorrow.

In an interview with The Mirror, he declared that Keir Starmer as prime minister would be “a change that cannot come quick enough”.

The former England international accused Liz Truss of “taking the absolute Mickey out of us” by helping the well-off as ordinary families find it difficult to make ends meet.

In a mini-Budget on Friday, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng axed the 45p top rate of income tax – handing 660,000 high earners on more than £150,000 an extra £10,000 a year. He also scrapped the cap on bonuses for fatcat bankers.

“People are struggling to pay their energy bills. I don’t know any person on more than £150,000 a year that will think it’s the right thing to do to basically give us more money,” Gary said.

“They want better public services, better health, education, doctor waiting times to come down.”

“It’s immoral to think at this moment in time, tax cuts should be given to the wealthy when people are so nervous and desperate,” he said. “The reason I’m there is to highlight with my voice that it’s just wrong.