After Blair’s Big Tent, Brown plans a Big Football Stadium of popular causes

The 2018 World Cup is, by every measure, a long way off. Fifa intends to take three years to decide on which continent the tournament should be hosted, and only then start thinking about a specific country. Even the Football Association (which would submit a bid for England) has not yet come to a decision. But one fan is agitating already. Gordon Brown has commissioned a Treasury feasibility study and is already talking up Britain’s chances. The football world may not be ready, but the British political calendar cannot wait.

There is something about a campaign for a sporting tournament which allows a politician to speak on a special frequency to sports fans: the ref’s whistle rather than the dog whistle, so to speak. And the message Mr Brown wants to broadcast is: ‘I am like you. Well — perhaps not exactly, but more so than David Cameron and his friends.’