It's coming home. Sadly, for a brilliant young England football team, though - what's coming home is not football. What's coming home (to roost) is the division intentionally sought by the kakistocracy of Boris Johnson and his cabinet of crooks, cronies, and incompetents.
It's coming home in the form of racist chanting, violent altercations, and the booing of the national anthems of friendly rival nations. It's coming home in reports of Danish and Italian fans at Wembley being threatened, spat at, and abused. It's coming home in reports of Lando Norris, the F1 driver, being mugged at the stadium, and it's coming home in reports of disabled fans being terrified during a match that should have been one of the best days of our life.
Most of all, it's coming home in the racist abuse that three young black players - Marcus Rashford (23), Jadon Sancho (21), and Bukayo Saka (19) - received after missing their penalties against Italy in Sunday night's Euro 2020 final.
Though the undercurrent of violence has long been there on the terraces and in the stadiums, and most definitely in the realms of social media where it is amplified, it has never been juiced so intentionally as it has by this current administration. Tyrone Mings - the England and Aston Villa defender used words far more eloquent than any managed by any opposition politician to reply to Priti Patel's tweet about the racism and violence witnessed on Sunday night both online and in real life.
PATEL:I am disgusted that England players who have given so much for our country this summer have been subject to vile racist abuse on social media.
MINGS;You don't get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as 'Gesture Politics' & then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we're campaigning against, happens.
Good words, Tyrone. Patel was craven before the tournament when she not only refused to condemn fans for booing a simple five second long anti-racist action but tacitly endorsed it. She was, of course, both trying to open up yet another front in the ongoing culture war and to appease her boss, the shameless opportunist liar Boris Johnson who has a long and detailed record of saying racist things and courting the racist vote.
Equally articulate and powerful as Mings, were the words of former Man Utd and England defender Gary Neville following the defeat of Denmark in the semi-final last Wednesday. He was, ostensibly, talking about Gareth Southgate:-
NEVILLE: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 is, of course, everything that Boris Johnson is not. Of course, the tunes of Johnson and Patel changed as the tournament went on and England not only played well enough to lose the final by the tighest of margins but won over previously sceptical fans with not just their football but with their open, friendly, and kind personalities and their unity as a team. Spearheaded by the thoroughly decent Gareth Southgate.
That's the trouble with constantly starting culture wars. Innocent people get caught in the crossfire. Populist politicians stoke up ancient hostilities as it polls well for them in the short term. In the long term, it tends to end badly and one can only hope Johnson and Patel siding with racists and against anti-racists will, soon enough, end the same way for them as that did for Donald Trump.
Outside of the arse lickers in his cabinet, Johnson is losing even more popularity within his own party. The cuts to foreign aid he has announced, ostensibly to help pay off the furlough scheme and to help with the pandemic recovery but in reality another sop to the racists who support his party, have been opposed by every single ex-prime minister alive.
Not just Labour ones like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown but Tories like John Major, David Cameron, and Theresa May. At the same time, surely even the most loyal Johnson toady must cringe when they witness Boris Johnson pathetically try to pretend he sacked Matt Hancock long after it became obvious that Hancock's position was completely untenable and he chose to fall on his own (pork) sword.
As Johnson supporters become more embittered about these public embarrassments, they become more defensive and angrier - and lie even more. But will that help then? The English football team have shown that togetherness and unity are still prized values for a large majority of people in this country and I sense, with trepidation, a changing of the mood towards Johnson and the rabble he surrounds himself with.
After the Chesham and Amersham by-election defeat last month, the Tories failed to take (as even many in the Labour party expected - and a fair few even hoped) Batley and Spen in another by-election a fortnight ago. Labour's Kim Leadbeater, the sister of the murdered former MP for that seat Jo Cox, beat the Tory hopeful Ryan Stephenson by just over three hundred votes - which was tight.
It doesn't tell the whole story. George Galloway, laughably representing something called the Workers Party, picked up an impressive, and disturbing, 21.9% of the vote. George Galloway is the very definition of a useful idiot. He did all he could to try and get a Tory elected (and in Scotland, he is on record as having voted Tory) while pretending to represent true Labour values. He has disingenuously, and homophobically, spread a lie that teachers teaching children about diversity (some kids have a mum and dad, some have two mums, some have two dads, some have one of each, and some have neither) is somehow the same as teaching children how to have anal sex with each other.
Galloway is a homophobic scumbag, a close associate of Nigel Farage who he campaigned for Brexit with it, and a true enemy of left leaning, progressive politics. He went on to suggest that Kim Leadbeater, a Batley resident - unlike himself, was part of a 'London elite'. Friend of the murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad, Galloway is a vile, loathsome, individual who has no interest in either the Labour movement or improving the lives of the people of Batley & Spen or, indeed, anywhere else. He is a vain self-promoter who sows hate wherever he goes, he sucks up to power (witness his behaviour around Saddam Hussein and his recent meeting with Steve Bannon) and punches down to those less fortunate than him. He is like Trump and Johnson, a populist, but only less successful. His closest analogue is actually Nigel Farage (who, according to Owen Jones - no Starmer man - is an associate of Tory voting Galloway, they certainly campaigned for Brexit together). A man who can't win himself but can certainly ruin things for others and delights in making things worse. The sooner he crawls back under the rock he came from the better.
This is the problem with trying to fight against this contemptuous and cruel Tory party. There are people like Galloway aligned with them and there are a few idiots on the left who are hoodwinked by Galloway. One such person, a former associate we'll call Kev, has been abusing several friends on social media this week and it's got to the point where he's almost saying it's more Tory to vote Labour than it is to vote Tory. Kev's been like that for decades, he basically hasn't grown up, but it's got so nasty people are defriending him now - including life long friends.
Life's too short to suffer abuse. I block now as well as defriend. Especially people who ONLY offer abuse like Kev. Instead I speak to people who are kind and actually ask me about my life as well as tell me about theirs. People who seem to actually care about me rather than people who only pop their heads out from behind a parapet to call me a Tory (something you'd like to think TWENTY of these blogs would disprove) or a cunt. Since I last wrote that's included my parents, Adam, Simon, and Michelle and Evie. Evie took time out to introduce me personally to her new kitten, Tigger, and I can't wait to meet her in real life in just over a week's time.
I've been doing other things, too, to keep my spirits up and have, mostly, been succeeding. I went to Pizza Express in Notting Hill after attending a Margaret Calvert exhibition at the Design Museum, I visited the British Library to see a show about the fight for women's rights, I ran a TADS walk in Canvey Island that I really enjoyed, and me, Shep, and Pam (as well as Kathy for most of the walk) finally completed the lockdown interrupted Capital Ring walk. Ending up with a curry in Greenwich.
I enjoyed the football tournament more than I had expected to as well. I watched England v Germany in The Lucas Arms near Kings Cross with Ian, Miriam, Mike, Kathy, and Damon (although a large section of the pub crowd decided to sing the jingoistic and unpleasant Ten German Bombers song which ruined the atmosphere), I watched the second half of the Ukraine quarter-final in Benfleet (after the Canvey Island) walk with Shep, Pam, and Adam, I watched the semi against Denmark on my own in the nearby old man pub The Brockley Jack, and for the final I joined Ian, Miriam, Vicki, Chris D, Ian F, Collette, Matt, Nat, and Damon in The Priory Tavern in Kilburn.
It was a good night (and even though I stayed off the Jaegerbombs unlike some I could mention) I felt a bit sore the next day. Some of that was down to the booze, some of it was down to the cruel nature of the defeat, but some of it was down to an utter despondency that England (and it is England not the UK here - the Welsh, Scottish, and Northern Irish fans don't act like this) still has so many violent and racist meat heads both 'supporting' (can you honestly call that 'support'?) the team and supporting the government.
I want to live in a country where people sign petitions in their hundreds of thousands to remove racists from social media platforms, where people gather to restore Marcus Rashford murals, where football players speak up on behalf of those less fortunate than them, and where kindness wins out over cruelty every time. A country where a helping hand, and not an iron fist, is offered to those less fortunate than ourselves. A fair and free country.
I'm really happy that I live in that latter country while at the same time being terribly sad that I also live in that first one too. It's gonna take more than some kind words and a hug from Gareth Southgate to change that - as Bukayo Saka knows only too well.
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