A game of two halves

If England do well at the Euros, it could help the Tories at the election. Jim White reads the runes on whether the PM is onto a winner or whether the Labour leader has an open goal

- Jim White

One of the first mishaps Rishi Sunak made on the election trail was tripping over a traffic cone. He was at Chesham United Football Club in Buckinghamshire, gamely taking part in a training session with a bunch of junior players.

It was pretty clear from his attempts to kick a ball in a straight line that none of football’s leading scouts would have been too upset at their failure to sign up a generational talent. But proficiency – or rather complete lack of it – was not the point.

Sunak was there to deliver an indicator of something else: his ordinariness. He was there failing to run with a ball at his feet to show the electorate that, whatever the assumptions of wealth and privilege that cling to him, he is just like us.

But like the comment about his parents not being able to afford Sky TV when he was younger, it was an own goal. For men in politics, there is reckoned no more efficient way to signal ordinariness than to advertise an understanding of the importance of football.

Which is why Rishi’s advisers ensured he was photographed in the stands at Southampton FC when they played in the recent Championship play-offs. Not in th e directors’ box, he was among the people, a regular fan you see.

His opponent Sir Keir Starmer is no different. The Labour leader, who enjoys donning an England shirt while watching international games, likes it to be known that he plays five-a-side every week with a bunch of mates. Though, perhaps wisely, he is less inclined than the prime minister to invite the cameras along.

And just before the election was called, he gave an extensive interview to the Daily Telegraph not about policy or political philosophy, but about his lifelong affiliation with Arsenal.

He has a season ticket at the Emirates and jokes that support for the club is one of the few things on which he and his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn could wholeheartedly agree.