Should England be participating in the Qatar World Cup? On the face of it, the case for a boycott is pretty compelling. Much of the infrastructure – including eight stadiums, an airport expansion, a new metro system and multiple hotels – has been built by migrant workers who are notoriously poorly treated by their Qatari employers. Women still have to obtain permission from their male guardians to marry, study abroad on state scholarships and receive certain reproductive health care. Muslim women who have sex outside marriage can be sentenced to flogging. Homosexuality is against the law and punishable by imprisonment. Freedom of expression and of the press leave a lot to be desired. The list goes on.
It’s hard to take the FA’s support for Pride month seriously when its most senior officials will be flying out to Qatar
The argument against a boycott is that any misgivings we have about human rights abuses are likelier to be listened to if we participate. When the ex-footballer Gary Neville was challenged by Ian Hislop on Have I Got News For You about his decision to go to the World Cup to commentate for a Qatari-owned television network, he made something like this argument, although he didn’t express it very well. ‘My view always has been that you either highlight the issues and challenges in these countries and speak about them, or you basically don’t say anything and you stay back home and don’t go,’ he said. ‘And I’ve always said we should challenge them.’
As Hislop pointed out, it’s not a binary choice: Neville could stay at home and highlight the issues. But to give him the benefit of the doubt, he probably meant to say that any criticisms he has of the Qatari regime are less liable to be dismissed if he’s there in person. That also appears to be the argument of the English Football Association, which is mounting a protest of sorts. It has joined forces with nine other European federations, including the Football Association of Wales, to support the OneLove campaign (‘to promote inclusion’), with all ten captains planning to wear OneLove armbands.
The campaign was started by the Dutch Football Association to emphasise the fact that all fans have one thing in common – namely, their love of football, with the implication that they should focus on that and oppose all forms of discrimination. But this seems a fairly toothless way of objecting to the mistreatment of women and minorities in Qatar. Isn’t OneLove more about eliminating discrimination from football than from entire countries? On the other hand, there’s a lot of money at stake – the tournament is expected to bring in $6 billion – so hoping for a more robust protest is probably unrealistic.
Does the ‘engagement’ argument stand up to scrutiny? It’s hard to think of an authoritarian country that has become more liberal after Britain participated in an international event hosted there. True, we sent a team to Russia to compete in the 1980 Olympics and Mikhail Gorbachev began dismantling the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime about five years later. But insofar as the international response to the 1980 Olympics was a factor, the decision of 66 countries – including the United States – to boycott was probably more influential. The fact that no countries boycotted the 2022 Winter Olympics in China doesn’t appear to have had a softening effect on Xi Jinping.
My objection to England’s involvement in the World Cup isn’t based on Qatar’s human rights record. It would be bizarre if we suddenly developed a conscience about taking part in sporting contests hosted by unsavoury regimes. Why should football be held to a higher standard than other sports? Rather, it’s the hypocrisy of people like England manager Gareth Southgate, who loses no opportunity to advertise his woke political credentials.
Last year, he and the FA defended the players’ decision to take the knee in the Euros ‘as a show of solidarity with the black community’. If they’re so concerned about discrimination against people of colour, why are they turning a blind eye to the exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar? The FA also supported Pride month in June and has a statement on its website opposing ‘all forms of homophobic, bi-phobic and transphobic language and behaviour’. Hard to take that seriously when its most senior officials will be flying out to Qatar to enjoy the hospitality of a regime that still imprisons homosexuals.
Wouldn’t it be more sensible if the England manager, the FA and ex-players like Gary Neville got down off their soapboxes and stopped talking about their ‘values’? If they don’t adhere to them, why should we?
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