In the end, there was little reason why England fans might have wanted to hang around after yesterday’s Euros final, except to bum an Estrella off a celebrating Spaniard. But in the unlikely event that football had come home, those of us watching in London would have been left high, if not necessarily dry, by London’s ‘world-leading’ police force and public transport network.
Yesterday afternoon, at the helpfully late time of 3.51 p.m, the Met warned football fans travelling into central London to avoid street drinking. Having issued an antisocial dispersal order, those congregating in the street with a beer could be made to move on. It also suggested pubs were full, so it might be an idea to watch at home.
They treated those wanting to celebrate in London as another nuisance to be managed, not visitors to be welcomed
This pressing need to avoid drinking or congregating in Westminster streets will come as news to the sodden staffers who crowd around Whitehall on weekdays and the legions of angry young men whose marches were a weekly misery after 7 October. But it was compounded by Sadiq Khan warning that fans needed to plan ahead, since TfL weren’t changing their usual Sunday services for the match.
If the match had gone to penalties – not an unreasonable assumption for England – the game could have gone past 11 p.m. For fans who has travelled into the capital to cheer on Gareth Southgate’s unlikely lads, this might have raised the choice between getting home in one piece, and missing England finally end 58 years of hurt – all while getting hassled for sneaking a pint outside.
The usual excuses were hidden behind. TfL claimed that timetable changes and planned engineering works ‘need to planned several weeks in advance due to the detail required…meaning any changes would had to have been made before the tournament started’. Union members are not required to give notice they won’t work on a rest day until a few days in advance.
This does not cut the (English) mustard. The date and time of the Euros final was confirmed more than two years ago. It wouldn’t have been a radical over-estimation of England’s chances to suggest a team that reached the final in the last Euros might do so again, and that fans might choose to watch, celebrate, or commiserate this event in the centre of our capital city, and that they might want a jar whilst doing so.
Yet those hoping to squeeze fun out of our metropolis are used to being gaslit by Sadiq Khan’s London: a capital that claims to be a 24-hour city despite all the evidence against. Where a ‘Night Czar’ receives a pay rise for presiding over a dramatic decline in the city’s nightclubs, and where Greggs goes to court to keep a store open until 5 a.m., after the Met declares it a hub for ‘crime and disorder’.
Those running this global mega-city lacked the foresight to stage an outdoor screening in the capital’s centre. They didn’t think it wise to ply the mouths of TfL’s staff with enough gold to get them to work for a few more hours. They treated those wanting to celebrate in London as another nuisance to be managed, not visitors to be welcomed.
From Berlin to Benidorm, evidence that our capital is in an international embarrassment for late-night living abounds. Fans in Germany could ride on a Night Tube – why not us? For those of us mad enough to live in London, it’s a mark of shame that the face it projects is one of puritanical incompetence. We exist at the convenience of London’s czars, not the other way around.
We have two more years before England have another shot at winning a major tournament. Kicking out Khan will take a little longer.
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