‘Come On The British Lions!’ – Examining The Dreadful Efforts Made By Conservative Politicians To Support England At The World Cup

Chris Wright

13th, July 2018

5 Comments

By Jack Beresford

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With England on a high after reaching a first World Cup semi-final in 28 years, politicians have wasted little time in attempting to shamelessly leap aboard the ‘footy’ bandwagon.

Unfortunately, it’s not gone particularly well for the Conservative Party, who have mustered several attempts to muck in with the Dark Fruits-saturated hoi polloi despite clearly and obviously knowing bugger all about football or the culture that envelopes it.

It’s not yours. This doesn’t belong to you, you wonks.

This was most evident on BBC Question Time on Monday night, where Tory MP Claire Perry made a jaw-grindingly awkward gaffe while attempting to draw a comparison between Theresa May and England manager Gareth Southgate.

In trying to pass herself off as human, Perry referred to the England team as the “British Lions”.

Beyond the obvious mix-up, it was a blunder made all the more painful by the fact that:

A) The British Lions are a rugby team e.g. a posho toff sport.

B) Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football fans might not be overjoyed about being banded together with the English.

It’s only the latest in a string of World Cup faux-pas involving major politicians.

There was the moment governmental gimp and Brexit bungler extraordinaire Boris Johnson decided to rain on everyone’s parade by tweeting after the win over Sweden:

It didn’t go down well, as the venemous replies to Johnson’s tweet suggest.

That wasn’t enough to perturb Boris though, as the hay-thatched ham joint returned to social media to offer a jolly ‘well done’ to the team after they lost to Croatia in the semis.

He was keen to stress how “proud” he was of the team – though the feeling is definitely not mutual.

Gary Lineker perhaps summed it up best:

Still, there was one tweet far worse than anything Boris or any of the other Tory dullards managed – step forward David Cameron.

Not only did Cameron put the wheels in motion for Brexit before scarpering to the arse-end of nowhere, but the plummy goon also – as many true football fans are liable to do from time to time – entirely forget which team he supports.

“Come on the Aston Martins, play up and a score a goal!”

Despite being a diehard Aston Villa fan from the age of 13, Cameron suffered a momentary switch of allegiance when he told the Tory Conference he supported West Ham.

Given his clear lack of ability to even feign interest in such a working class pursuit, you’d think the former Prime Minister would preserve his low post-referendum profile, but no – he couldn’t help popping his gammony jowls above the parapet to congratulate the *checks notes* England team on *checks notes again* doing so well at the *checks notes for a third time* World Cup.

Oh, do fuck off forever, David, old boy.

To be clear: there’s no issue with politicians genuinely liking football.

The issue here lies with the ones who are just masses of writhing, scaly tentacles in human skin suits, pretending to like football in order to assimilate themselves within society.

That’s just profoundly and fundamentally wrong.

Posted in England, Videos, World Cup

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5 Comments

  1. Anonymous says:

    What a well balanced article

  2. Thomas F. Orr-Winter says:

    Jack Beresford you need to get back to baked beans and countdown. Bloody students, come on Pies. Don’t let cheap articles take over from balanced ones and ONCE MORE we just want football, none of this political nonsense. Poor!

    • Chris Wright says:

      @Thomas: Pies official line on the matter is that it’s always acceptable to laugh at the Tories.

  3. Fart Garfunkel says:

    I’m not English, but rugby is considered posh? Ironically, over here, soccer has a bit of a reputation as a suburban middle to upper-class sport.

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