When England football fans start doing politics, it’s time to pay attention

A terrace chant by supporters at Saturday’s match versus Andorra points to deepening societal tensions

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

Photo: Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I have stood on more football terraces (or, more accurately, sat in stands) than I care to remember. Not only when supporting my own club (Wolverhampton Wanderers – don’t ask!), home and away for the past 45 years, but also when watching random other matches, including the occasional England international, at stadiums up and down the country.

Anyone who has done the same will know that the songs and anthems that ring out from supporters during matches are a mixture of the funny, the fruity, the profane, and the downright abusive. Sometimes it can be brutal, such as when the late Rangers goalkeeper Andy Goram, after being diagnosed with mild schizophrenia, was taunted by opposing fans with the chant, ‘Two Andy Gorams; there’s only two Andy Gorams!’ (The man himself took it in good spirits, apparently.)

But rarely, in my experience, do the activities of supporters get overtly political. Usually, fans are interested only in winding up the other lot’s supporters and players while cheering their own team to victory. The game, if anything, provides an escape from the problems and pressures of normal life, including the tedium of national politics.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course – particularly where there exist longstanding divisions or grievances. The Old Firm derby in Glasgow is an obvious example. And, even today, a match between Chesterfield and Mansfield Town carries added spice (and requires a heavier-than-usual police presence) on account of the historical conflict between the Derbyshire miners, who supported the great strike of 1984-85, and their counterparts in Nottinghamshire, who didn’t.

England fans, too, have, over the years, been known to engage in a bit of political sloganeering – demanding, for example, that there be ‘No surrender to the IRA’.

But what we heard from the terraces on Saturday evening during England’s World Cup qualifier against Andorra struck me as something quite rare.

The fans gave it to the prime minister with both barrels. ‘Starmer is a c**t!’ they chanted, repeatedly, to the tune of ‘Give It Up’ by KC and the Sunshine Band. There were also a few renditions of ‘Keir Starmer is a w***er, is a w***er!’

I cannot recall ever hearing England football supporters strike up in unison – and with such hostility – to deliver a tirade against any previous prime minister (and especially one who has been in power for less than a year). I cannot say that it has never happened. But I cannot think of any obvious examples.

Now, it could be that the match itself was such a dull affair that fans decided to find pleasure in other ways, and having a dig at the nation’s prime minister filled some time. But I think there might be more to it than that – and it has little to do with pensioners’ winter fuel allowance or ‘freebiegate’.

England fans, like most football supporters, are largely white and working class. This is a cohort which is becoming increasingly resentful – and, dare I say, politicised – as a consequence of feeling, not without justification, that it is losing its place in society.

It is a sentiment that is particularly pronounced in the areas that lie beyond the nation’s fashionable cities and university towns – what you might call small-town, provincial or post-industrial England. Such places are often infused with football-mania and will inevitably be well represented at fixtures involving the national team.

The alienation of folk in these places, and the indignation they feel at their treatment by a ruling liberal-progressive elite which sold them the dream of globalisation and then, when it didn’t quite work out for them, dismissed them as ‘bigots’ and ‘nativists’ and turned a deaf ear to their legitimate concerns, threatens to reshape – indeed, is reshaping – our entire political landscape.

The economy and the institutions of the state long ago stopped working for these people and their communities. Theirs is today a world of deindustrialisation, crashing living standards, higher rents, mortgages and bills, crumbling public services, intense demographic and cultural transformation, increasingly lawlessness, and diminishing social solidarity and trust.

The political establishment which imposed this new order on them is, not surprisingly, the target of their anger. We saw it with Brexit; we saw it in the protests that occurred after the Southport massacre; and we see it in the surge in support among working-class voters for Reform UK and the growing popularity of right-wing populists such as Tommy Robinson.

The prime minister, whether he likes it or not, is seen by millions as the embodiment of the liberal-progressive ideology that has wrought such havoc, and engendered such simmering tensions, in our country. While he has sought in recent months to articulate a more conservative line on touchstone issues such as immigration, many remain unconvinced that he really believes it. As a north London lawyer, Starmer’s personal background and political outlook bear striking resemblances to those of Tony Blair, and it is surely no coincidence that he has gathered around him certain big beasts – most notably Peter Mandelson, Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell – from the new Labour era.

But for all that the party under Blair was said to be in tune with ‘the man on the street’, the fact is that traditional working-class voters began to peel away from it in significant number during those years. In the end, many in the areas now defined as the ‘Red Wall’ saw that the type of society envisaged by new Labour was at odds with the one they themselves wished to see (or defend).

In the same vein, it will be incredibly hard, perhaps impossible, for Starmer – who, had he been around at the time, would almost certainly have been an apostle of new Labour’s brand of global cosmopolitanism – to make people believe that he really is attuned to the small ‘c’ conservative impulses and wider political demands of voters in these communities.

All of this goes some way to explaining why England football fans turned their fire on the prime minister at the weekend. They weren’t just amusing themselves; there is almost certainly something deeper going on.

The voices that joined the chorus of sledging have, frankly, had enough. In some respects – and it may seem daft to claim it – the abuse was not personal, at least not in the sense that those hurling it felt antipathy towards Starmer the man (he is, let us remember, a genuine football fan himself). Instead, it was directed towards everything they believe he stands for – an ideology that has brought to their lives economic turmoil and a profound sense of displacement and dislocation.

This is the white working class, and whatever we think of it, it is beginning to stir. Starmer would have every right to feel insulted by the chants that came from the terraces. But as the tensions slowly mount across our nation, he would be well advised not to ignore them.

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