Keir Starmer is a football fan. So why not wear an England shirt?
Caution will only get you so far. Just ask every England manager since Sir Alf Ramsey.
Leading politicians have a troubled relationship with football — David Cameron famously forgot which team he was pretending to support.
Strategists think a passion for football is a direct line to the hearts of ordinary voters. It makes you look normal, approachable. The kind of person you’d go for a pint with (even if that pint would almost certainly be awkward and largely silent).
If you pretend to follow a sport, you’ll quickly be found out. Football and politics have similar kinds of obsessive fans, who know every last detail.
But Keir Starmer isn’t a false fan. He’s a committed Arsenal supporter, and an England fan. So it makes sense for him to be watching England’s first Euro 2024 match in the pub. But dressed like this?
A few weeks ago, it was claimed Starmer had been advised not to wear an England shirt during the tournament, in case he alienated Scottish voters. Labour sources “disputed the claim that Sir Keir had been given any such direct advice,” which is a curiously worded non-denial.
If anyone had said that, they should have been ignored. Angela Rayner, seen in that photo in an England top, was similarly pictured in a Scotland one two days earlier, and the sky does not seem to have fallen in.
This doesn’t matter. Except…
There are blunders and then there are Blunders. Serious ones, like walking out of the D-Day commemorations when they haven’t finished yet. This is not one of them. But it is an example of the kind of silly thing that can happen when too many smart people spend too long over-thinking something simple.
Politicians want to be associated with things like football tournaments for the same reason they want people to think they’re football fans. If England do well (please, God, let them do well), they hope to bask in the reflected glory. If it all goes wrong in the second round, they want to show they’re hurting too.
But this photo is the worst of all worlds. You’re aiming for the PR benefit of watching the football, but you’re so scared of blowback that you’re the only one in the photo not wearing an England shirt.
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. But this kind of thing has happened before. Do the little things right — wear a neat suit, tie and poppy on Remembrance Sunday, wear an England shirt like your own deputy is doing in that photograph, and no-one will notice.
But this image stands out because of that plain, dull, t-shirt. It’s the “ming vase strategy” in clothing form — a t-shirt chosen by committee to minimise offence. It speaks to a strategy that wants to please everyone by upsetting no-one. You can campaign like that, but you certainly can’t govern that way.
It doesn’t matter, it just looks bloody stupid.
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Another Labour campaign blunder?
