Bandwagon-jumping Theresa May and co proof sport and politics should never mix

For the majority of us, it was the high point of a fabulous summer of sport.

But for others, the Cricket World Cup success was a chance to hijack the moment for their own agenda.

Theresa May had the England players in Downing Street before their celebration hangovers had kicked in, holding the World Cup, imploring us to think she’s ending her premiership like a true champion. When her record was more dismal than Terry Connor’s played 13, won none, spell in charge of Wolves.

She claimed the successfully diverse country she leaves behind is epitomised by “a team that represents modern Britain,” when she sent vans with “Go Home” on the side around London telling the Windrush generation they weren’t wanted here.

What a shame Jofra Archer didn’t show her the knee?

And she’ll be giving them all MBEs and OBEs in her legacy honours list to woo public opinion, just as Tony Blair did after the Ashes victory of 2005 when he was taking heavy flak for invading Iraq (a few years after offering Champions League winner Alex Ferguson a knighthood before he’d even left the Camp Nou).

The same Blair who set up a Football Task Force to stop the little guy getting exploited, then put former Tory Minister David “Two south London clubs” Mellor in charge, before ditching it when he realised he was straying onto Rupert Murdoch’s manor.

The so-called People’s Game has always been rife for glory-stealing.

Remember David “Two claret-and-blue clubs” Cameron stepping into Luis Suarez’s Bitegate, condemning him for setting a bad example to kids? I wonder whose bad decisions future generations will think hurt them more.

After the Salisbury poisoning, Boris Johnson called for a boycott of the Russian World Cup, comparing it to Hitler’s 1936 Olympics.

It turned out to be a fabulous football party that captivated the nation, with Johnson keeping schtum. Although soul-mates like Nigel Farage embarrassingly linked it to Brexit, claiming football, like democracy, was finally coming home.

Johnson was at it again when his Tory leadership campaign kicked-off, vowing to bring the 2030 World Cup to these shores. And this week, both he and rival Jeremy Hunt told a hustings they’d be more than happy to knight Ben Stokes if they become PM.

Which brings us to Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeting shortly after England’s cricketers were captained to victory by an Irishman: “A d..n close run thing, we clearly don’t need Europe to win.”

Which could have been construed as humour but for the fact the last joke the Honourable Member for the 18th Century cracked was about the Jacobites losing at Culloden.

It was as cringeworthy and inaccurate as a desperate May calling Liverpool and Spurs’ Champions League semi-final comebacks proof that “when everyone says your European opposition have got you beat and it’s time to concede defeat, actually we can secure success if everyone comes together.”

Not least because both London and Liverpool voted Remain, one of the clubs is owned by Americans and managed by a German and the other coached by an Argentinian, the goals that put Barcelona out were scored by a Dutchman and a Belgian, and Ajax were seen off by a hat-trick from a Brazilian.

The more out-of-touch and derided for their failures our politicians become, the more shamelessly they try to exploit sporting success to distract from it.

Maybe if, like our successful sports teams, they had self-discipline and a will to work collectively for victory, British politics wouldn’t be viewed as a complete laughing stock.

Talking of self-discipline, how those cricketers didn’t do what Andrew Flintoff did when Blair invited the Ashes winners into Number 10 and peed all over May’s plant-pots I’ll never know.

Maybe Stokes holding it in was his most super-human feat of the summer.

Source: Mirror

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