Eric Cantona, and why not?

Eric Cantona is not going to be the next President of France. Nicolas Sarkozy can sleep a little (not much) easier as the only decent player ever to play for Man Utd has revealed, in an interview with the Big Issue, that when he was seeking support from French mayors for his recent presidential bid, Cantona was actually involved in a publicity stunt to raise the profile of a homelessness charity, the Abbé Pierre Foundation. Good for him, but a shame really, because a man who is prepared to jump into a crowd kicking, with his studs showing, might just have the physical and emotional resilience for leadership without the assistance of a guillotine. (Much easier with one.)

Listen to somebody writing about being a leader in another environment – the church. It was written in the Church Times in 1998. ‘Living in the Christian institution isn't particularly easy. It is generally, today, an anxious, inefficient, pompous, evasive body. If you hold office in it, you become more and more conscious of what it's doing to your soul. Think of what Coca-Cola does to your teeth. Why bother?’ It is a profound sadness that anybody can accurately describe leading other human beings in those terms – what are we? why do we behave like this? – but it’s a deeper, deeper sadness that their observations are of Christian leadership. Who brews the Coke? Is it the institution? Is it the leader themselves? Is it the world we serve in? Is it the disciples they work alongside? Yes (x4).

The man who wrote those words has just caused a vacancy to arise at the very top of the Church of England. Maybe he was having a bad day, but I doubt his opinion has changed too much in the intervening 14 years, and I for one wish him well and am grateful for his leadership. So, in the absence of any phone call from Lambeth Palace for myself, the campaign for the robust, stubbly, Gallic leadership of Archbishop Cantona begins here.