The sound of England football fans chanting against Keir Starmer at Saturday night’s otherwise tedious match between England and Andorra is something which should be greatly worrying Labour strategists.
It is very rare that politicians become the subject of chants at matches and when politics enters the discourse of sports fans it is almost always a sign of a wider problem.
Science and technology secretary Peter Kyle’s suggestion that it is just “football chanting, part of the spirit of the game” does not really cut it as an answer.
A not-so-distant example of a backlash from fans sitting in a stadium was an early sign of a promising career on the way down.
Back in 2012 at the Paralympic games in London George Osborne was roundly booed in the Olympic Stadium as he was about to present medals to the winners of an event.
At that point two years into the coalition government, after he had imposed harsh austerity measures to rebalance the UK finances after the banking collapse, Osborne had become a figure of hate. At the time you could see on his face how soul destroying the experience was.
He would later admit to feeling “hurt” by what happened but said it changed him as a chancellor but notably he never fulfilled his ambition of becoming prime minister.
Not many politicians end up in chants. You have to go back to former Tory culture secretary David Mellor in the 1990s, a passionate Chelsea fan where the club’s supporter adapted their song “Carefree” after he was caught up in allegations about an affair.
Politicians know the cultural importance of sport. You will rarely find an MP who does not want to associate themselves with their local football team.
Infamously, Tony Blair, who amazingly never became the subject of disobliging chants, once got into trouble for claiming he watched Newcastle United when the late great Jackie Milburn was playing, even though the player retired when the former PM was four and living in Australia.
At the height of New Labour and “Cool Britannia”, Blair was doing keepy-uppy with Kevin Keegan.
Sir Keir also knows the power of football. That chant may hurt him more because he is a genuinely passionate football fan for his beloved Arsenal and England.
He revelled in England qualifying for the final of the Euros on the day of his first visit to the White House and was there for the final in Germany as a guest of the then chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The old saying of the great Liverpool fan Bill Shankly never goes out of date: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. It’s more serious than that.”
And the reaction to the horrendous events at the recent Liverpool trophy parade or the ongoing repercussions of the Hillsborough disaster, where 97 Liverpool fans lost their lives in 1989, only serve to emphasise that.
In recent politics, pro-Palestinian demonstrations from large groups of fans at matches of Celtic and others has had political significance. An Oxford academic Maher Mezahi has done a whole thesis on how football chants as protests affected recent politics in Algeria.
For Sir Keir not yet a year in power to already have seeped into the consciousness of football chants as a figure of hate represents a much wider problem.
During the Runcorn by-election and local elections, Labour MPs and activists recounted the sheer very personal hostility for the prime minister when they knocked on the doors of voters.
“I don’t think he can turn that level of hostility around,” one senior figure claimed.
There was similar dislike for chancellor Rachel Reeves and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, favourite to replace him if he is forced out, was “not far behind” in attracting the ire of voters.
Labour were celebrating a surprise win in Hamilton for the Scottish Parliament last week but it was noticeable that Sir Keir was not the reason for that victory.
In fact, just three days before voting he was literally 22 minutes drive from the constituency launching the strategic defence review in Glasgow. But nobody wanted him to pop down the M74 to support his party’s candidate Davy Russell.
In person, Sir Keir is easy get on with. But his public image is dreadful.
The reality is that the hard choices on welfare, winter fuel payments, a personality that comes over as robotic, the issue of freebies (including an executive box at Arsenal games), and nicknames such as “two tier Kier” have all stuck.
If football fans are chanting that the prime minister is a “c***” after just 11 months in government with the party languishing eight points behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, then another four years of this should fill Labour strategists and MPs with trepidation.
Ironically, the prime minister most likely to understand this in the last 40 years is Sir Keir. Football is one of his first loves. When he entered Downing Street, so reports go, civil servants were shocked to find his diary contained fixtures for Arsenal games. He is the senior politician in modern times who has spent the most time standing on the terraces listening to football fans. While he may understand the danger posed by Saturday night’s chants, whether he can turn things around remains to be seen.
