Paul Dallison writes Declassified, a weekly satirical column.
The English Premier League has returned, and so has British politicians’ desire to appeal to fans on the terraces.
To tie in with the return of top-flight football, Reform UK, the party of Nigel Farage, has launched its own football shirt. At the time of writing, only the L and XL versions of the shirt (priced at £39.99) remained in stock (S, M, 2XL and 3XL having sold out). A version signed by Farage, for £99.99, was sold out. And yes, that’s £60 for Nigel Farage’s autograph.
Alas, Reform’s marketing team was unable to use what was surely its first choice of design, a massive St George’s Cross (the English flag), as it’s already been taken — by an Italian team!
Last month, Genoa CFC launched its second kit, which is white with a huge red cross emblazoned on the front. The Italian Serie A team did this because the design (look away now, Nigel!) belonged to the city of Genoa and was later adopted by the English, first for maritime use and then as the national flag. It’s enough to make a right-winger faint (and for goodness’ sake no one tell them that the patron saint of England, St. George, is Turkish).
Another reason for Genoa’s design decision was that the club was founded by a group of Englishmen in 1893, making it Italy’s oldest football club (the first C in CFC even stands for Cricket).
The only downside to Genoa CFC’s launch of the kit was that one of the shirt models had a tattoo inked on his knee of two people engaged in what we in the media like to call “a sex act” (the offending image was edited out).
So instead the Reform shirt is in the party’s turquoise and white colors, with the party badge where the football club crest would be and a Union Flag where you would often find the kit manufacturer’s logo (more on that in a minute).
On the back it says “Made in Britain” (obvs) and has “Farage” where the player’s name would be and the number 10 (presumably because 10 Downing Street is where Farage would like to end up).
In an online video, Farage says (with all the enthusiasm of a middle manager forced to give a speech on an office away day): “We are Reform FC and I’m proud to be its manager. What a season we’re having. We’re right at the top of the leaderboard [he must mean “table” as this isn’t golf], we’re nine points clear of our nearest rival and we need your support.”
The shirt has come in for criticism for two reasons.
First because before the European Championship in 2021, Farage said that then-England men’s team manager Gareth Southgate was “out of touch” and that England fans “have a right to boo when players take the knee for Marxist BLM” (likely meaning the Black Lives Matter movement and not the U.S. government’s Bureau of Land Management, nor, indeed, France’s former finance minister and erotic novelist Bruno Le Maire). Farage added, “Let’s keep politics out of football.”
The second source of criticism was that the Union Flag on the Reform shirt is in turquoise and white, and yet manufacturer Nike received a torrent of abuse in 2014 when they brought out an official shirt on which the England flag’s traditional red cross had been altered to one with navy, light blue and purple (and of course purple is the wokest of all the colors).
Farage called the flag design choice “an absolute joke” and was joined in the condemnation by Keir Starmer (then opposition leader) and Rishi Sunak (then prime minister).
In Farage’s defense, he admits that football is not his favorite sport. He told former football star Matthew Le Tissier (who has shared 9/11, anti-vaccine and Ukraine war conspiracies on social media) that he prefers cricket (just like in Genoa) but that his football team is Crystal Palace, who, ironically for a team followed by the leading Brexiteer, are playing in Europe this season.
The post It’s Farage on the right wing! Reform UK launches football shirt. appeared first on Politico.
