Criticising FIFA is literally the very least Theresa May can do to help ex-soldiers It’s my job to explain why politicians disagree with one another, but from time to time there comes a row […]

It’s my job to explain why politicians disagree with one another, but from time to time there comes a row that has me truly stumped. Wind turbines, for instance. People say that they’re ugly, which is a reasonable enough opinion, but do those same people look at smoke stacks or pylons and think they’re looking at the unspoiled countryside?

The British government’s row with Fifa about whether or not the England team should be able to wear a red poppy when they play Scotland is another. Some people seem to think that if we went along with Fifa’s rules it would be a terrible breach of our duty to those soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the defence of the United Kingdom.

Just as with those wind turbines, I must admit I’m a little bit perplexed about the row. On the increasingly rare occasions that I play football, I must admit, the sad fate of our boys at Ypres tends to be far away from my mind. Instead, I tend to ask myself “am I onside?” “can I cross the ball?” “Can I beat the fullback?” “Can I cut inside?”, questions which, regrettably, tend to have the same answer: no.

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“I doubt that Marcus Rashford will be contemplating our glorious dead when he walks out at Wembley in a week’s time.”

It may be that England’s professional footballers are made of different cloth, though, seeing as it feels increasingly common that they can neither stay onside, cross the ball, beat the fullback or cut inside, I’m not certain the gulf is as wide as I would like. In any case, I doubt that Marcus Rashford will be contemplating our glorious dead when he walks out at Wembley in a week’s time.

Still, I suppose you might say that the poppies are not for the players but for the audience, but my guess is that most people who will watch England and Scotland play on 11 November will mostly be wondering what exactly the point of Wayne Rooney is nowadays. I’ve observed the minute’s silence on Remembrance Sunday my entire life, and I can honestly say that I’ve always spent it in contemplation of those who have fallen in combat, and those who returned alive but permanently damaged, whether physically or psychologically. But if I spoke as honestly about how I spent the minute’s silence before a kick-off at a football match, most of the time I’ve spent it worrying about why Aaron Ramsey is being played out wide on the right and whether we’ve got enough to win without Santi Cazorla.

‘Virtue signalling’ at its worst

The right sometimes likes to accuse leftwingers of “virtue signalling”, usually when they engage in such gauche activities as suggesting people ought to be housed and fed, but if there’s a real-world example of “virtue-signalling”, it is surely having a shouting match over the right of 22 football players to wear a poppy they will soon forget, for the benefit of a crowd with other things on their mind.

If Theresa May wants to exert herself in the interests of remembering British soldiers, why not put the money and power of the British state behind increasing provision for people suffering from mental health problems, as more than half of veterans who suffer from mental health problems never receive the treatment they need? Why not find the revenue saved by scrapping the allowance for an extra room – the so-called bedroom tax – which hits, among other people, families who have members serving abroad in the armed forces?

The real reason is that all of these would cost money, time and political capital, none of which the government is particularly minded to exert in this case, while shouting about poppies is practically cost-free.

Brexit Britain again forgets its neighbours

But there’s a bigger problem than just Downing Street’s virtue signalling; as so often in Brexit Britain, we seem completely oblivious to how our actions are seen overseas. Fifa, rightly, has kept a tight lid on putting political messages on shirts, and the remembrance of war dead is a political act. As worthy of remembrance of those who died fighting back fascism in the Second World War are, imagine for a moment how you would feel if you were Korean and the Japanese football team wanted to honour its war dead? Don’t forget that the Japanese government has never apologised and still plays down the extent of its war crimes against the Korean people.

Or imagine that you were Lithuanian, and while watching a tie against Russia, you saw that football team wearing poppies commemorating their role in the Second World War. Yes, the Red Army were instrumental in defeating Hitler, but they were a savage occupying force in Lithuania and did their level best to eradicate the country’s language and people. And what about the Serbian football team? Should they be able to don a memorial to the Serbian soldiers who died in the Yugoslav Wars, in which the Serbian military committed acts of genocide and the worst war crimes in the continent since 1945?

These are all questions to which the answer is “of course not”: and yet they are questions which don’t seem to have occurred to a large section of our press and our government. And of course it’s the same in our approach to Brexit, where our leaders seem to think that we can demand what we want without consequence for how it plays in Europe.

Reading the Daily Mail and listening to Theresa May, you could be forgiven for forgetting that other countries have elections, too. And just as the Football Association may find it has picked a fight it can’t finish with Fifa, our tone-deaf approach to our European allies may prove to be our undoing.

Stephen Bush is special correspondent at the New Statesman.