Politics

I laughed aloud when I heard Gianni Infantino, president of Fifa, identifying himself sanctimoniously with a whole list of disadvantaged people because he too was a victim: he was teased at school for having ginger hair.  I had teenage spots, so can I claim unique insight into the sufferings of the Uighurs?  That some of those he listed owed their disadvantage to Qatar and its Fifa partner – exploited migrant workers, notably, and gay fans – seemed not to disturb his tranquil assumption of the moral high ground. In its rambling incoherence, shameless narcissism and bare-faced hypocrisy, his speech put its finger on some of the key absurdities of what passes for

The Cursed Ratio strikes again. Twitter users have voted 52-48 in favour of Elon Musk allowing the return of Donald Trump to the website, causing the gnashing of a great many progressive teeth in the airless no-space of the internet. The kicker to this is that – psych! – the former president almost immediately announced that he had no interest in returning to the site in any case. A pyrrhic victory, then, for Little Elon in his Struggle Against the Eunuchs, but still.   I’m no fan of Trump myself. I’d love to see him doing a sullen perp-walk in an orange jumpsuit, and I dearly hope one day to witness such a thing. But it strikes me that having him back

As England’s football team prepare to face Iran in the first match of their World Cup campaign, the backdrop is already miserable. Football’s most prestigious tournament is taking place in the wrong season in a deplorable state where workers have died in the construction of stadiums. To make matters worse, the Three Lions’ first opponents are in the midst of a brutal crackdown back home on those who have dared speak out in opposition. Hundreds have died; thousands more have been locked up.  Russia, of course, was booted out of the tournament months ago following its invasion of Ukraine. As Iran’s leaders intensify their repression on the streets of Tehran,

To understand the Conservative party’s approach to government, it’s useful to think of there being two Britains. This is something British people love to do; we divide the country into North and South, rich and poor, London and not. The division that matters for the Conservatives, however, is a little different. It’s not a matter of economics or geography, but age. It’s the divide between Old Britain and Young Britain. Old Britain, with the aid of the Conservative party, is very slowly throttling Young Britain The Conservative electoral strategy is simple and straightforward: it will do whatever it needs to win the votes of Old Britain, and it will do

Guess who turned up in Bangkok this week at the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting? The forum, which includes the US, China, Australia, Japan, Russia, but not France, was visited by none other than President Macron. ‘You must be asking yourself what a French president is doing here’, he charmed in English.  Macron claimed to be the first European leader to be invited to the forum. He insisted he was there because France is ‘a country of the region’. According to the Elysée this invitation ‘validates the Indo-Pacific strategy launched in 2018’. It does indeed, but with far more subtle ramifications. What has always been a logical, albeit humiliating, step

In the glitzy Fifa museum, in squeaky-clean downtown Zurich, there is a new exhibition which sums up the upbeat, inclusive image which football’s world governing body is so eager to portray. It’s called ‘211 Cultures – One Game’, and it consists of 211 items of football ephemera, one from each of Fifa’s member associations all around the world. Most of these items are fairly anodyne: trophies, fan regalia, football shirts and suchlike – curios you tend to find in any sports museum. A few are items of genuine historical interest: the Spanish contribution is a table football set, invented during the Spanish Civil War by a Spaniard called Alejandro Finisterre,