On Wednesday morning, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly spoke to LBC’s Nick Ferrari about the forthcoming World Cup in Qatar. Gay fans, he said, ought to be “respectful of the host nation,” where homosexuality is illegal, as he assured us the Qatar authorities would in return. He mentioned “a bit of flex and compromise on both sides.” Which, I’m guessing, means should gay football fans attend, we won’t end up in prison for being who we are, so long as we don’t do anything too gay, like talking effusively about Jack Grealish’s thighs.
I was livid (too gay?) with Mr Cleverly for five minutes after reading his pronouncements. So I listened to the broadcast, hearing his words in context and oddly stopped being angry (very un-gay). His message to gay football fans was, essentially, look after yourselves out there. My tip, should he want one for future reference, is to be less headmaster-ish moving forward, to try to address this corner of his electorate as friends, rather than a separate species.
