Yesterday saw the traditional Lobby vs MPs football showdown in a rainy Manchester. The sprightly Lobby team managed to pull ahead and secure a 4 goal victory with a final score of 4-2. Highlights included Brendan Clarke-Smith scoring a worldy for the MPs. After the game he said: “I hope I’m ahead of Maguire in World Cup squad”. Watch this space…
Meanwhile Ben Bradley booted a goal kick into someone’s head. Refreshing to see some point-scoring and foul play from politicos…
This might be one of the quickest U-turns in modern political history. He goes from saying he’ll be “watching the game for sure” to “I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to watch the game” within the space of about ten seconds. That’s one player staying on the bench over the campaign to open the pubs early. “Honestly…”
“We’re all appalled at the idea of our club being used to sportswash a country where homosexuality is criminalised, women need a man’s permission to have a smear test, and migrant workers are treated like dirt… Andy Burnham has recently spoken (in the Guardian) about the need to reckon with Manchester’s historical links to slavery via the cotton trade. Right now in Qatar, migrant workers are subject to horrific exploitation, and thousands died building the World Cup stadiums. It’s no good talking about the past if you don’t take action in the present.”
Much like woke pundit and Starmer cheerleader Gary Neville, despite his high volume of football-focused output, Burnham appears to have so far remained silent on the matter. It’s another case of Qat-ari got your tongue…
Sports fans among Guido’s co-conspirators will recall one of the biggest examples of leftie pearl-clutching in recent times: the commentariat’s outrage at the 2021 Saudi takeover of Premier League club Newcastle United. Labour MP Mike Amesbury raised the issue in the Commons: “Is the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund a right and proper and fit for purpose owner of Newcastle United?” Comrade Clive Efford added: “It may be one thing for the morally bankrupt Premier League to accept money from Saudi Arabia, but for the UK government to turn round and say it welcomes its investment is another thing.” Labour frontbencher Chi Onwurah intoned: “I think it’s important to say that in utterly condemning this atrocious, horrific massacre [executions in Saudi Arabia], I speak for many, many of my constituents and Newcastle United fans”. All perfectly fair points…
The woke elite of football punditry were quick to join the bandwagon. Always outspoken Labour Party supporter Gary Neville worried: “How were the Saudi Arabians accepted into the Premier League? We don’t know. There’s no transparency and there’s no independence.” Specifically criticising the Saudi acquisition, he said: “there will always be question marks about them”…
You’d be forgiven for wondering, then, why Labour and left aren’t sheikh-ing their fists at the impending Qatari takeover of Manchester United (Guido’s football insider sources say the deal may come to the crunch soon). It’s not clear what moral distinction there is to be drawn between the Saudis and the Qataris – both states have an authoritarian grizzly charge sheet. Officials are reportedly sceptical about the Qatari bid, according to Bloomberg, particularly given controversies surrounding bidder Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani. Once again, the leftie outrage bus is curiously selective…
Labour, which recently enforced a boycott of the Qatari World Cup on its MPs, is keeping a studied silence. As for the football commentariat, the fact that luminaries such as Lineker (£1.6 million) and Neville (£10 million) pocketed Qatari cash for their TV work surely cannot be relevant…
Boris is currently under fire for choosing to take a holiday over hosting a No. 10 reception for the victorious English Lionesses. While Downing Street says discussions are continuing around trying to find a time to host the team, it looks rather odd that plenty of other England sporting victories have been celebrated far more than Sunday night’s. The former FA head has called the lack of a No. 10 reception “disappointing for the players. What they have achieved is incredible.” To be fair to Boris, Sadiq Khan is also under fire that there’s been no traditional bus parade…
Tory MP Tracy Crouch has called on both Rishi and Liz to commit to hosting a reception in September if elected leader, a commitment Team Liz has been happy to make. In an apparent dig at the current No. 10’s failure to find time:
“The Lionesses have been an inspiration to our nation. Liz will host a reception in No10 if she is Prime Minister in September and her government would ensure the Lionesses are recognised for their historic victory in a suitable way.”
Promising to host a party in Downing Street will do little to cool allegations that she’s the Boris continuity candidate…
As the government ramps up its rhetoric on social media safety in response to the racist abuse hurled at Rashford, Saka, and Sancho after the Euros final, new data from both the Centre for Countering Digital Hate and the Kick It Out equality campaign show that whilst the level of abuse has increased in the past year, the majority of it is coming from overseas. A point which Gareth Southgate also acknowledged on Monday.
Sanjay Bhandari, chairman of Kick It Out, revealed that roughly 70% of all abuse over the past two seasons came from foreign accounts, adding:
““These are not football fans…They are people who have never been inside an English football ground.”
The Centre for Countering Digital Hate, meanwhile, found 105 Instagram accounts had directed abuse towards England players after the final. BBC Newsnight’s investigation revealed the locations of 64 of those accounts, of which only 5 came from the UK. Clearly this is still a problem, yet it’s worth bearing in mind where most of the abuse originates when trying to legislate against it…
