Football fandom doesn’t come naturally to politicians

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Good morning. It’s the depth of summer, so today’s newsletter is on why politicians struggle to sound authentic when they talk about football. (Don’t worry, there is very little actual soccer in today’s note.)

Authenticity troubles

Why do so many politicians — including the ones who actually like football — sound like they are either frauds, or recording hostage videos, when they talk about football? (We touched on this briefly in the podcast this week.)

Part of the reason is that most politicians tend to avoid the registers that are commonly enjoyed by match-goers. Even fans of the most successful teams can sound a lot like Eeyore when they talk about their team, or they sound angry, or they pore over the statistical minutiae of their team’s performances.

Fatalism, anger and intense geekery are all looks that many politicians don’t want to project when they are out and about campaigning for re-election, so right from the start, a politician talking about sport is likely to sound a little bit unnatural. (This is a big part of why Keir Starmer’s videos about football often seem highly unconvincing.)

Then there’s the question of who their audience actually is. Rishi Sunak’s statement about the England women’s team could almost have been laboratory-designed to annoy matchgoing fans of women’s football. (Full disclosure: one of those matchgoing fans is me.) But in terms of the broader message most people want to hear, it was exactly right.

So the real emotions politicians want to nod to aren’t necessarily ones they want to display in public, and there is a big gap between what, say, a casual observer wants to hear and what a committed fan wishes to hear. Taken together, you have some of the trickiest terrain a politician can encounter, rhetorically speaking.

Of course, sport is a good illustration of a problem that politicians struggle with on much more important topics. On the death penalty, for example, a politician typically runs into difficulty when they try to explain why they oppose it. That is precisely because the debate takes place in an emotional register that many politicians don’t feel comfortable occupying.

Now try this

England aside, I had a lovely weekend. I really enjoyed Alice Fishburn’s column on moving home, Soraya Roberts on the decline of the sports-action movie, and our big read on the arrival of driverless taxis.

Top stories today

• UK house prices | Asking prices for UK homes recorded their sharpest August drop since 2018, in another sign that the property market is slowing after four consecutive months of house price falls.

• Race to rescue | Some of the UK’s biggest companies are seeking to separate a prominent boardroom diversity campaign from the CBI after they cut ties with the crisis-hit business lobby group. 

• Lucy Letby | Police believe Lucy Letby, the nurse convicted of murdering seven babies, may have harmed dozens more infants at two hospitals in the north-west of England, the Guardian’s Josh Halliday was first to report.

  – Independent inquiry launched: The government ordered the probe, which is expected to include how managers responded to concerns raised by clinicians months before her arrest, after 33-year-old Letby was found guilty of the crimes at Manchester Crown Court on Friday.

What do you think? Let us know your thoughts on politicians’ social media messages ahead of big sporting events by voting here.