Mihir Bose

Boris’s football socialism

(Photo by Toby Melville - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

It was once my job to brief Boris on football. Then he was very much a free marketeer, now it is amazing to see that he wants to play the socialist sports lord, a task that defeated Tony Blair. The briefing took place on a Sunday afternoon in September 1998 when news emerged that Manchester United’s directors were planning to sell the club to Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB. Boris had decided to devote his column to it. His problem was he did not know anything about the deal, or for that matter much about English football, and as the chief sports news correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, he rang me to be sure of his facts.

He was intrigued as to why the Manchester United fans were so hostile to the bid. Would it not, he asked me, bring in a lot of money for the club? I told him of the special bond fans had with their club and how Murdoch was seen as a money grabber. I was impressed by how quickly he understood the intricacies of the proposed takeover. However, his piece, while balanced, did not agree with the view of many fans that there should be government intervention to stop the bid on monopoly grounds, something Tony Banks, the sports minister, had hinted there might be. As it happened the bid was stopped by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

For Boris to play the football socialist, he would have had to reverse nearly 50 years of free market policies

For Boris to play the football socialist, he would have had to reverse nearly 50 years of free market policies that have made this country a haven for foreign owners, many of whom the fans feel no affinity for. Five of the six English clubs who signed up for the Super League are owned by foreigners, the sixth by an English tax exile.

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