Oh No! English People Support England! Racists! Think of the Children!

Sunder Katwala has already done a terrific job dismantling this fatuous piece of New Statesman guff by James Macintyre. But that doesn’t mean other people can’t play the game too. Macintyre, you see, wants to see a United British football team. Not, mind you, because he thinks it might be better than England’s but because this is needed “for the sake of the Union”. Yes, really.

Macintyre’s piece is remarkable, not least because I’m not persuaded it contains even a single sensible sentence while every one of its assumptions is wrong and each of its dubious interpretations is as hopeless as anything ever produced by a Russian linesman. It’s so bad he could probably have persuaded the Guardian to pay* him for it. So…

If, as Cecil Rhodes claimed, to be English is to have “won first prize in the lottery of life”, then it doesn’t much feel like that during the World Cup.