Field report from east London, weekend of 9 and 10 June 2024: Rishi Sunak has destroyed the Adidas Samba. Possibly for ever, possibly irreparably. You will of course recall that the Samba was the unanimous “shoe of the summer” for two years running until its appearance on the prime minister’s Instagram page at the start of April, at which point it became shoesona non grata among London’s cool, interesting-sunglasses-wearing elite. Since then, I and most people with east London postcodes have had a tricky relationship with the Samba. I hold my own personal pair up every time I get dressed (you can’t argue with that silhouette! The colourway goes with everything!), imagine Sunak wearing them with a shirt, black socks and chinos (insane!), then promptly put them down again. I bravely wore a pair to the local park, London Fields, over the weekend in an attempt to “reclaim” them, but they went down with a clunk and I’m not sure I can show my face there again.
Why is this relevant? Well, I think it illustrates quite neatly what a dark kiss of death politicians can put on something cool by expressing even a mild interest in it or appreciation of it (arguably Rishi killing the Samba is the most tangible change he has enacted as PM). I think often and fondly about the time Tom Watson quit Labour’s shadow cabinet on a massive Glastonbury comedown, and signed off his resignation letter with a plea to Ed Miliband: “If you want to see an awesome band, I recommend Drenge.” Why would you say that? Don’t say that. I want my politicians to wear black suits that don’t fit very well, know what Hansard is and nothing else, and once every five years one of the particularly ghoulish-looking ones who sits at the back gets in a funny sex scandal. Stop wearing trainers! Stop listening to Drenge! Do your job!
All to say, Euro 2024 starts this week, and sadly this is happening in the middle of the run-up to one of those elections this country is addicted to having. So while Ed Davey splashes around in various bodies of water, the Labour and Conservative leaders have been in an unofficial football-off to show how much they both bloody love bloody football. This has meant Keir Starmer – sorry, Sir Keir Starmer – droning on about his love of five-a-side and Arsenal in an attempt to show what a true man of the people he is, while last month Sunak dribbled through some cones in front of children and told everyone how “buzzing” he was that Southampton had got promoted, in a way that may well have been sincere but also just really reminds me of the time David Cameron forgot he supported Aston Villa and said he supported West Ham instead.
Sunak actually likes football so much that he cited his team’s recent promotion to the Premier League as counter-evidence to the gossip that he’ll swan off to California the second he loses the election, telling Robert Peston: “I mean, my football team just got promoted back in the Premiership and I hope to be watching them for years to come in the Premier League.” Personally I’d take the cushy tech job, but sure. Stay here and see if Adam Armstrong can score in the Premier League.
Thing is, I have no doubt both of them actually like football. To be fair, I only know two things about Starmer full stop: he is an Arsenal fan and has a weird nasal voice, which actually makes us more similar than I’d like to admit. But something feels eerie and disingenuous about football chat when it’s coming out of the mouth of someone who checked with three people in the car over here whether the shirt-sleeve roll-up they just did looks natural or not. Football fans can always smell blood when someone is talking about their game from a position of falseness – one of my favourite videos on the internet is of Tyson Fury, Wow Hydrate in hand, kicking off an interview with the convincing phrase: “Hopefully we get an absolute great result,” before failing to name a single Manchester United player.
It’s even more excruciating watching politicians trying to find common ground by mentioning sport: see Sunak asking a pub full of Welsh people if they are “looking forward to all the football”, before one of them quietly explains they didn’t qualify for the tournament he’s referring to. Both leaders, on their best day, affect the air of an alien wearing a human suit, trying to navigate society on a fact-finding mission before reporting to the mothership and giving the order to destroy. Trying to talk about Jarrad Branthwaite on top of that only makes it weirder.
But then we’re wading into dangerous territory here: who gets to say who likes football? Fundamentally it is a game – a silly little game, where Harry Kane always scores and always loses – and anyone can enjoy it, as much or as little as they like. There are a lot of football ultras who want to instantly quiz you whenever you show a mild fascination with the game – “Oh, yeah? What was Saka’s xG during Euro 2020, then?” – and policing whether Starmer is allowed to like Arsenal or not seems outside the spirit of what makes football such a true gift and torture to our culture. He’s not, though, not until this election is over. As an England fan, I have a big summer of tipping ambulances over whenever they win a group game ahead of me, and I don’t want it sullied by politics.
Joel Golby is a writer and the author of Four Stars: A Life. Reviewed
