It was a disastrous first day of campaigning for Rishi Sunak: his audience of warehouse workers in Derbyshire was discovered to contain undercover Tory councillors, and his small talk in Barry, south Wales, was decried when he asked everyone whether they were looking forward to “all the football”: Wales did not qualify for the Euros.
Sunak is now probably in a helicopter somewhere, self-soothing with the truism that all prime ministers make football gaffes. It’s so common that it’s almost part of the office; that you be inauthentic in your love of the beautiful game. For sure, all prime ministers do mess something up, but every clanger tells its own story, about the man (or woman), the time, the expectation and the choice of team.
David Cameron v Aston Villa
The top-line of Cameron’s mistake of 2015 was that he had always claimed to be an Aston Villa fan, and suddenly he was asking everyone to support West Ham. The awful thing is, you can see cortisol coursing through his body as he realises his mistake, starting at his hairline; the awful realisation that something has just happened that will follow him for ever. As a slip of the tongue, it’s impossible. Football fans just never get their team wrong. Who hasn’t said the wrong name in bed, or called one of their children by the dog’s name? But nobody ever misspeaks on football.
In fact, Cameron’s insincerity was much deeper: in 2001, he said outright in the Commons that he wasn’t a football fan. Then he said in the same debate that he was (“when England travels abroad to play football … I want the team to win so much and fear that they will not do so”). In 2012, he suddenly had a team (Aston Villa), which he’d supported since he was 13 (1979), but by 2015, his support had been post-dated to 1982, when the team he may or may not have heard of beat Bayern Munich in the European Cup Final. What you’re looking at, in other words, is a man who doesn’t believe in anything, which dovetailed with his overall style as PM: “I think I’d be rather good at it.” It’s entirely different to the impression Sunak made in Barry, which was more, “Isn’t there some carnival coming up that you proles like?”
Tony Blair v Jackie Milburn
In 1997, Blair said he was a Newcastle United supporter, and was mocked for years for claiming to have watched Jackie Milburn, an impossibility, given that he was four, and living in Australia, when Milburn retired. It was actually a mistake by a reporter, not Blair, and Blair joked later: “What a lot of trouble I had over it.” But, here’s the thing: he didn’t have that much trouble. Like his mockney accent, the does-he-doesn’t-he support Newcastle question was taken as a feint of the everyman, and priced in. Sure, he’s pretending to be classless: that’s what people do nowadays.
Harold Wilson v Leonid Brezhnev
Wilson was a lifelong fan of Huddersfield Town, that much was unquestionable: in the mid 1920s, they had a golden period when they won everything, which coincided with a prelapsarian period in Wilson’s own life, between eight and 10, before the economy went to shit, his dad got made redundant, and his politics began (1930). So there was no posturing towards the common man in his carrying around a postcard of the 1924 team, but it was a bit weird how often he got it out of his wallet to show it to people.
Anyway, he did that to Brezhnev, and Brezhnev thought he wanted an autograph, and signed it for him. So after that, he was carrying his beloved team, signed by the general secretary of the Communist party. This is really Brezhnev’s gaffe.
Margaret Thatcher v the British working class
Margaret Thatcher hated football, hated football fans and brought about an ID card system that was extraordinary in its reach (accessing the grounds without an ID card was punishable by a month in prison). But she was really just mediating a class war through the twin evils of trade unions and football (this was before it became acceptable to demonise benefit claimants). When, in the 90s, there was that football surge, and nobody, anywhere, didn’t like football, it was almost a post-class war settlement, a collective sigh of “never again”. Naive, as it turned out.
Winston Churchill v football
According to Stanley Matthews, Churchill always did the same thing in his pep talk to the England team – he shook their hands for slightly too long, called them troops, and wished them well. If pushed, he would admit that he didn’t like football, he preferred polo. Polo. It’s actually quite rude, like going up to Jacqueline du Pré just before a concert and saying you prefer the kazoo. But there is a certain amount of dignity, when you’re a posh prime minister, in just admitting it.
