Jess Phillips is wrong about football’s double-barrelled surnames

As the nation went football mad last week, nowhere was there a more stark expression of the ‘I’m-new-to-this performative fandom’ phenomenon than in Westminster.

We were treated to the Prime Minister wearing an England top over a shirt and tie, Jacob Rees-Mogg bizarrely recreating the John Barnes ‘World in Motion’ rap and so on and so on.

But amid this stiff competition the MP who most – unwittingly – revealed their apparent real lack of interest in or knowledge of the beautiful game was Labour’s Jess Phillips.

‘My youngests question for tonight “why do footballers never have double barrelled names?”’, she asked.

Phillips no doubt intended to score a culture wars point by contrasting the humble origins of the wildly popular ‘boy from Brent’ Raheem Sterling and his teammates with the likes of Rees-Mogg. But instead she unleashed a flood of derision.

That was because one of the most noticeable quirks in the game in recent years, accelerating with each new season, has been the proliferation of double-barrelled surnames.