Goals and Balls

Now that the Sewell report has established the realm's utter innocence of institutional racism, it is of course only right and fair that British sportspeople desist from bringing the master race into disrepute by implying that more must be done. At least one Conservative MP has condemned the gesture of taking the knee as unnecessarily divisive because it alienates racists, and has compared the England team to one that gave the Nazi salute at a Berlin match in the nineteen-thirties. Liberal patriots will doubtless find much to nod sagely over in the National Haystack's more measured tone, ordering "the whole country" to aid the England football team in its thrashing of the beastly wogs, while emphasising that empty actions are more effective than meaningful gestures.