Killjoys, two-Keir Britain and the World Cup
Sir Alf Ramsay and Thomas Tuchel
On Friday morning’s Today programme on Radio 4 Anna Foster asked Andy Trotter, a retired chief constable, about the Government’s decision to keep the pubs open till 5 am on Monday morning for England’s World Cup match against Mexico. Was it a good idea? she asked. Mr Trotter gave a good answer. It obviously meant having more police on duty, he said, the combination of heat and too much drinking would lead to trouble and, most interesting of all, there would be more domestic violence. As the police know, and has been widely reported by the media, there is a very worrying correlation between men watching football, drinking too much and beating up their wives or girlfriends.
Ms Foster asked if he wasn’t being a bit of a killjoy. It was a strange response. The policeman’s answer had been clear and thoughtful. He had explained the problems which, perhaps typically, Sir Keir Starmer and his advisers (not to mention Anna Foster and her producers) had not thought through. Starmer obviously wanted to go out on a high note as the man of the people. Perhaps a bit late for that. He might have thought of this before attacking farmers and the elderly, while failing to stop hate marches and rape gangs.
The night before, the England manager Thomas Tuchel had called for children to be allowed to stay up and watch the big match between Mexico and England (kick-off at 1 am on Monday and if there’s extra time and/or penalties that means the match won’t be over till nearly 4 am). This means countless children wouldn’t be able to go to school later that morning. Many schools have in effect given pupils the day off, though others are showing the match at a later time in school.
Obviously, this doesn’t bother Tuchel. No killjoy he. But what about single working parents? Are they supposed to just leave their children unattended at home? And how are teachers supposed to cope with sleepy, grouchy children? Has Bridget Phillipson had anything to say about this? Perhaps she’s another populist. Never mind working parents or overworked teachers: let’s not be killjoys.
I remember the 1970 World Cup, held in Mexico. I don’t remember anyone calling for children to miss school so they could watch the football. And certainly no one I knew stayed off school because they had stayed up late watching Alf Ramsay’s team, captained by Bobby Moore and, for one match, Bobby Charlton (That team was, by the way, considerably superior to Tuchel’s.)
Of course, if England can’t cope with the altitude in Mexico City, the hostility of the huge home crowd or the best team they will have played against in the tournament so far, then Tuchel may have to join Keir Starmer at the labour exchange or at the very least explain to the British police why there had been a spike in violence, perhaps especially domestic violence, early on Monday. They could put it down to the price of populism.
This is a sign of the times in contemporary Britain. Everyone wants to be popular these days. No one wants to make tough choices and tell children and pub-goers that they can’t always get what they want. It’s odd. Starmer and Rachel Reeves didn’t seem to mind trampling all over the entertainment industry, especially pubs and restaurants, a while back. But now they’re on the way out, they seem to be the pubgoers best friends, even though a pubowner on the same Today programmme pointed out that this was disastrous for him. He would be paying his staff lots of overtime, by the following evening he and his staff would be exhausted and there might well be some drunken violence in his pub.
Sorry to be a killjoy, but Anna Foster and her producer, Thomas Tuchel and our outgoing Prime Minister need to grow up and think about the real world. It’s a world of domestic violence, working parents, hard-working teachers, policemen and women and publicans. I wonder why they didn’t? Welcome to two-Keir Britain. I’m sure it will all be a lot better once the King of the North is in charge.
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