An empty England shirt in Downing Street: Gary Neville 1 Newspaper columnists 0
The pundit summed up the broken state of our politics and media in a single line.
For the British media, a collection of fevered egos drunk on symbolism and addicted to ‘narrative’, the success of the England team in Euro 2020 has been like so much expensive catnip.
The solid, sensible, empathetic and unflappable leadership of Gareth Southgate has been particularly appealing, leading to everything from features on how men can be more like him to columns explaining why he “knows what women want” and how many of those women have incorporated him into their erotic fantasies.
There’s more than a little cognitive dissonance to be found in the newspapers and columnists who campaigned for Boris Johnson — a value-free, philandering, loyalty shifting, fetid bin bag of a man — suddenly finding themselves enamoured with the loyal, humble, self-effacing and team-playing Southgate.
Inevitably Johnson, who had to have his arm-twisted into criticising fans who booed the team in the early stages of the tournament, and the monstrosities of his cabinet like Priti Patel, who dismissed the team as indulging in “gesture politics” by taking the knee, have now pulled on England shirts.
At least, unlike Rishi Sunak’s spads, Johnson and Patel’s advisors have bothered to take off the tags before they tried to pull off a photo opp.
But the inevitable shift by the Tories to take some of the reflected glory from England’s success is utterly transparent. As is the move by tabloids who have written many disgusting stories about players in the team — particularly The Sun whose treatment of Raheem Sterling was so beneath contempt it was subterranean — to now laud their ‘heroism’.
For the many thousands of words expended by columnists and commentators, it was Gary Neville, offering post-match punditry yesterday, who summed up best why Southgate feels so refreshing:
The standard of leaders in this country the past couple of years has been poor, looking at that man Southgate, he’s everything a leader should be, respectful, humble, he tells the truth.
It was fitting somehow that Boris Johnson’s latest appearance before the Liaison Committee, the Voltron of parliamentary committees comprised of the chairs of all the other committees, took place just hours before England stepped out against the Danes. Here was the England manager’s exact opposite: Disrespectful, vain, and entirely incapable of telling the truth — even to himself.
No question was direct enough to avoid a Mornington Crescent-style trundle around the houses from the Prime Minister. Labour’s Chris Bryant asked directly: “Did you sack Matt Hancock?” He could not have been blunter. But off Boris Johnson went in a cul-de-sac of complete bullshit, the same one he pottered around in the days after Hancock’s handsy antics were revealed:
We read the story concerning Mr Hancock and CCTV on the Friday and we had a new health secretary on the Saturday.
That’s all I have to say on the matter.
I suspect that, having implied he sacked Hancock his spokesperson tried to use the magic phrase “the Prime Minister considers the matter closed” and he tried to keep the Health Secretary, Boris Johnson really does believe he sacked him. Once a lie falls from the Prime Minister’s mouth, it becomes the truth for him.
On Northern Ireland, on schools, on ‘ghost children’ lost to education during the pandemic, on the environment, on China, on every other subject thrown at him by the committee, Boris Johnson offered emptiness. The MPs stared into the void and the void yawned back at them, desperately bored.
It’s often said by the press that Johnson’s problem is that he’s “just too loyal” and that’s why he demurred in sacking Hancock, letting the hapless and corrupt Health Secretary fall on his (pork) sword. But that’s horseshit. Johnson, a creature of the media himself, simply believes — correctly as it happens —that if you sit out a scandal long enough hacks get bored and the caravans move on.
That Mekon turned Dan DareMeToSayIt, Dominic Cummings, wrote in his most recent Substack post that Johnson is “almost as comfortable with living in chaos as Floyd Mayweather but panics all day about the media.” The comparison with Mayweather is apt in more ways than one.
Like Mayweather, Johnson is good at fights — often fighting dirty — but also craves for people to love him. He’s morally bankrupt and driven by money and fame far more a desire for legacy or in pursuit of some bigger goal. Rafael Behr writing in The Guardian yesterday that there is “little actual substance to the prime minister’s vision” as if it were some startling revelation was ludicrous.
The Prime Minister’s supporters in the media and the wider country alike are not suffering from some sort of false consciousness where if only they opened their eyes wide enough they would see that the emperor is not only naked but helicoptering his cock in a blatant display of contempt for them. They know that Boris Johnson is a clown and they like it. It’s a kind of twisted British take on the already empty American dream — “Yes, it’s all a grift but perhaps the grift will benefit me eventually.”
Johnson tells a bumptious, boosterish story of ‘global Britain’ that particularly appeals to English people who cannot stand the idea that they and their country are not special and anointed with manifest destiny. It doesn’t matter if this tale is played out in front of sloppily painted flats while the backstage machinery rots and the director and his pals loot the theatre’s finances.
Boris Johnson’s political career is the suspension of disbelief taken to its very limits. He lies and lies and lies and lies and lies — I could keep typing that line for the rest of this newsletter — and tame political commentators find excuses for it every time. The football analogy is that of “winning a free-kick”, where a player’s ability to fall convincingly to the ground mortally injured before leaping up once the foul is given is lauded as skill rather than cheating.
The Johnsonian era is one of blatant opportunism. The tabloids and broadsheets alike would have beasted Gareth Southgate if England’s results had gone the other way. They were ready to rip after the draw against Scotland and the manager acknowledged that in his comments after the win over Germany:
You know that if you change the shape and pick certain personnel instead of others and it goes wrong, you are dead.
Such is the fairground mirror world of British public life that the England manager knows he will face the consequences if he fails but the Prime Minister can fail time and time again without responsibility truly falling at his door.
Coronavirus put 130,000 past Boris Johnson’s team and he’s not even shuffled his squad. Hancock retired injured, crocked by his own unfitness for office and a hard tackle by The Sun, rather than being dismissed by Johnson, no matter what the Prime Minister’s lie-pickled mind might tell him now.
The tabloids — especially The Sun, which hasn’t yet fully turned on Johnson — have been yoking England’s performances to the Prime Minister’s reckless rush to unlock the country; Southgate has given you goals, Johnson has given you unencumbered access to pints again!
And the papers will go even further if England win on Sunday. The Tory party’s vaccine bounce will be combined with Euros elation, and ministers who mithered about the ‘Marxist’ footballers and briefed against Marcus Rashford for his terrible crime of campaigning for hungry children will wrap themselves even more tightly in the flag.
Just as England’s game against Germany could never be anything other than the umpteenth replay of the war, the newspapers will turn an England win at the Euros into an analogy for Brexit and the boisterous antics of Boris Johnson. It will be the biggest distraction, turned from a triumph by a diverse, kind, and socially conscious team and their admirable manager into a political advantage for a gang of corrupt opportunists.
England’s win against Denmark had nothing to do with Boris Johnson or his government and provides no analogy for the way they govern the country. But a question in the pre-game press conferences, lobbed in Danish keeper Kasper Schmeichel’s direction by a British hack, was pure Johnsonianism:
… playing England, you’ll be very, very aware of the clamour for success for the England national team — it’s been so long for this country — and you’ll be particularly aware of the phrase, ‘It’s coming home’. What would it mean to you guys to stop it coming home tomorrow night?
Schmeichel treated the question with the contempt it deserved (“To be honest I haven’t give any thought to what it would mean to stop England more than it would mean to Denmark…”) but the premise said a great deal about English arrogance and the country’s perpetual ‘main character syndrome’.
Treating other teams as NPCs to vanquished in a video game that England is destined to win, while also harping on endlessly about past losses, is a strong part of the xenophobic and myopic approach of the British media to many issues beyond football. It’s also a huge element of Boris Johnson’s approach.
He wanted to be world king as a child and now finds most parts of being Prime Minister boring. He deceived and dissembled during the Liasion Committee hearing because he hates being questioned. Pulling on an England shirt — Sterling’s no. 10 stolen for a cheeky reference to Downing Street — is much easier. It’s all symbolism and no one can question him on that.
If only the newspapers who are so enamoured with the easy empathy and ethics of Gareth Southgate could make the connection between his success and the empty England shirt that occupies Number 10. I want England to win on Sunday but I also want Boris Johnson to lose. He’s only cheering now because he sees there’s something in it for him.
Johnson is politics’ most consistent diver and he detects another chance to win a penalty. Keir Starmer’s unconvincing pint and well-worn Arsenal shirt won’t matter one bit. If football comes home — and he can stop Priti Patel from deporting it — the Prime Minister will be the one who scores in the polls. And right-wing newspapers will work hard to help him along.