Disunited kingdom

"The Euros have destroyed the Leftist myth of backward, racist England", opined Telegraph associate editor Camilla Tominey on Friday. Safe to say she spoke too soon.

Leaving aside the ridiculous assertion that "backward, racist England" is a "Leftist myth", there was a part of me that, on Friday, might have agreed with some of the sentiment in Tominey's claim. For the duration of the tournament, things did seem to have changed for the better. We did seem to have moved on. The nation was rallying around a young, forward-thinking, multiracial football team and, in Gareth Southgate, a manager who exudes empathy and decency and whose leadership skills put those of our current government to shame. The boo boys had been silenced. There was an air of anticipation, cautious optimism, togetherness.

But then came Sunday and the final. Everything had already started to turn sour well before the penalty nightmare, with pissed-up, flag-draped yobs trashing the centre of their own capital city and breaking into Wembley. This was the England of old - boorish imbeciles drunk on jingoism and xenophobia. And when the team - valiant, dogged - came up agonisingly short, the weight of pressure proving too heavy for the young shoulders of Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Buyako Sako to bear, the appalling ugliness spilled onto social media.

Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have condemned the racist abuse directed at the players, only to be quite rightly called out for their hypocrisy - including by one of the England squad. "You don't get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as 'Gesture Politics' & then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we're campaigning against, happens", wrote Tyrone Mings. Perfectly put. Whatever they might make a show of pretending, the Tories have created a political and social climate conducive to such vile behaviour. 

So the togetherness of the last few weeks was temporary, the apparent unity merely ephemeral. The fractures and fissures are once again there for all to see. That supposed "myth" of "backward, racist England" is well and truly back, having never really gone away - despite the endeavours of a bunch of brave young men who, for once, for a while, made me actually feel a flicker of pride at being English.