Plans by the government to introduce a regulator to the football industry – endorsed by all Westminster parties just a year ago – have, to use jargon oddly appropriate in this case, been ‘kicked into the long grass’.
Truss is instinctively against regulating almost anything. When I asked her about the ‘fan-led’ Crouch Report on the campaign trail a few weeks back, she replied, not very cryptically, that she would apply a ‘very high bar’ to any new types of regulation.
So, the news that the legislation has been paused is no great surprise to me.
The Premier League has, in effect, largely become a closed shop of the 20 teams currently residing in it, plus the 4 or 5 subsidised clubs in the Championship who can expect to go back up soon
For what it’s worth, I’m with Truss instinctively and philosophically when it comes to the nanny state. Yet just two years ago, I wrote a letter with Damian Collins MP calling for the establishment of a football regulator (Collins, interestingly, is now a minister in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
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