Gary Neville’s fairweather morality

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.

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.