From triumph to disaster for football and politics alike

Ivor Gaber is Professor of Journalism in the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex.

This month is the 50th anniversary of England winning the World Cup. Last month a team from a country with a population just a tad larger than Brighton and Hove knocked England out of the 2016 European Championship. My how times have changed.

I was at Wembley in 1966, standing on the terraces in and among the German supporters. Hard to imagine now – there was no crowd segregation and no hint of trouble, indeed nothing but friendly words exchanged, despite England’s controversial third goal.

Back then Britain was just waking up to the fact that, with the help of the odd Beatle and Rolling Stone, it was beginning to swing. 

England's World Cup winners in 1966.

Back then Britain was just waking up to the fact that, with the help of the odd Beatle and Rolling Stone, it was beginning to swing. OK so mods and rockers were still battling it out on Brighton seafront but by 1966 the worst was over.

Harold Wilson’s Labour Party had just won a landslide victory in the General Election on a promise of creating a New Britain that was going to be “forged in the white heat of the scientific revolution”. It might not quite have turned out that way but, at the time, the new Labour Government looked like it knew where it was going.

And one of those destinations was Europe with more than two thirds of the adult population supporting Britain’s attempts to join the Common Market, as it was then known. When they were asked in 1975 (we having joined two years earlier) if they wished to remain members, the same number voted Yes.

How very different from today, although after years of being told by politicians what a dreadful organisation the European Union was, and how all our problems would be solved if only we could escape from the clutches of the Brussels bureaucrats, it was no surprise that enough of us believed them and voted to leave.

One of the claims made by the Leave campaign. Photo courtesy of Abi Begum via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

The long-term economic consequences of our departure can only be guessed at but in the short term it is forecast that we are heading for a sharp economic shock which has begun with the pound sinking and the chancellor announcing that his target of balancing the books by 2020 was now unobtainable - just as the experts predicted.

Ah yes those pesky experts, denounced by Michael Gove as people whom the country has had enough of – an extraordinary statement for a man who wants to be Prime Minister to make. I have to say that when I see my doctor, my dentist or my car mechanic I am extremely grateful that they are ‘experts’.

But what none of the political experts, and here I guess I have to include myself, predicted was that in the wake of last week’s vote we look like we could lose not one but two party leaders; to misquote Oscar Wilde to lose one “... may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

Making matters worse is that the result seems to have ‘given permission’ to some of the nastier elements in our society to express offensive opinions about those whom they regard as different.

Although it is perhaps wrong to make light of the very serious political, economic and even constitutional quandary we now found ourselves in as a result of last week’s vote. Certainly making matters worse is that the result seems to have ‘given permission’ to some of the nastier elements in our society to express offensive opinions about those whom they regard as different, and presumably inferior, to themselves – little do they realise.

There was a rise in reported incidents of racism following the EU Referendum result.

Clearly the country is now more affluent, more diverse and, despite what I’ve just written, mostly more tolerant. But it is also more divided.

But returning to the Britain I stepped back into in 1966 after watching Geoff Hurst clinch the World Cup at Wembley, what is the balance sheet between then and now?

Clearly the country is now more affluent, more diverse and, despite what I’ve just written, mostly more tolerant. But it is also more divided. In very general terms the referendum result paints a vivid picture of this divide. The areas that voted Leave (and here, as ever, Sussex is an exception) were generally poorer, less educated, less urban and less diverse than those that voted remain.

And it’s not just a social divide; the main leave areas were the North, the Midlands, the West and Wales; mostly voting to remain were London, Scotland and Northern Ireland. And the divisions don’t stop there. On the political level the two main parties have never been so sharply at odds with themselves, as the current leadership battles reveal the truly brutal nature of politics, just ask Jeremy or Boris.

So it all adds up to a toxic mix with the country heading I know not where. I was at Westminster on Thursday, just moments after Boris Johnson had said he was not going to be standing for the Conservative Party leadership. I asked a senior BBC political correspondent if he had known this was coming. “I knew nothing,” he said, “and anyone who tells you different is lying”.

Looking for another ‘expert’ I tackled one of our leading pollsters, thinking that if journalists don’t know what’s happening then surely pollsters do (pause for laughter). His verdict was clear: “I’ll tell you what’s happening; chaos, doom and recovery, but not necessarily in that order.'

So that’s all OK then.