It screamed out of the front page of this morning’s Telegraph 10/6/10, ‘England United: How Football Draws Us Together.’ I just couldn’t resist. I grabbed my copy, rushed home and I wasn’t disappointed. All the usual cliches about dear old England, with barely a hint of journalistic reflection. All that was missing was an accompanying feature on the Dunkirk spirit. And would you believe it, turn two pages and there it was; a full page feature on ‘The Battle of Britain: 70 years on’. Some things never change in The Torygraph.

Under the banner headline; ‘Here We Go, All Over Again’ a Jasper Rees attempts to stir the passion of St George with some reminiscing about past World Cups and all the joys and heartbreaks that they brought to this long suffering football loving island. The sub-heading is particularly revealing as to the mood of the piece; ‘The World Cup, which kicks off tomorrow in South Africa, has become a uniquely unifying force in English life.’ The question is; just how real is that unity?

Rees kicks off with the premise that women as much as men have been drawn into the football opiate and in that sense I suppose it can be argued that football is having a gender unifying effect. Rees states, ‘The truth is that millions of women have long since given up the battle for the remote and have joined their blokes on the sofa.’ Rees continues, ‘Meanwhile, offices up and down the land are running complex prediction-based sweepstakes that are ever more inclusive.’ Presumably Rees is inferring that women like a sporting flutter as much as men. Rees offers no statistical evidence for this assertion so we will, for the moment, just have to take him at his word.

Rees, now in full flow asserts, ‘Like it or not, the World Cup is a uniquely unifying force in English life.’ Rees is astute enough to add the caveat, (Owing to the fortunes of the other home nations, I hesitate to use the word British)’. What Rees is not prepared to entertain is the concept that English life is, and always has been, a remarkably complex and diverse creature, which amongst many others, includes many millions from the so called other home nations. Under Rees’ definition of English, are those from a Celtic background obliged to support mother England in all things sporting? On this front I think he will be sorely disappointed.

Rees is not to be deterred. Reaching a crescendo of national fervour Rees explains, ‘Football, it hardly needs stating, is now part of the national lifeblood, like the weather or soaps. It has come to pass that many people no longer define their position in society by, say, their class or their job or, heaven forbid, their religion or even where they come from. In this world of shifting certainties, there is only one constant in many a modern life: the identity of the club you support.’ Rees then goes on, a little dewy eyed, to argue that this new identification with all things footy is even ‘deeper’ during a World Cup. Rees muses, ‘When a player kisses the badge in the next four weeks, there’s a sporting chance he might actually mean it’.

How should we deconstruct this mountain of journalese? It seems that with a single flourish of the journalistic pen, Rees has wiped away that nasty class thing that has been inconveniently hanging around for centuries, nay millennia. Workers no longer relate first and foremost to class but rather to their local football club. As millions of workers across Europe take to the streets in opposition to savage public spending cuts, those cuts a direct consequence of capitalist greed and mismanagement, I wonder if we should be so quick to write out of history class allegiance? Last week when tens of thousands of angry Spanish workers took to the streets it was not Barca or Real Madrid that was on their minds. Even more significant, I read the other day there has been a wave of strikes by Chinese workers demanding more pay and better conditions. It seems Mr Rees that the proletariat just won’t go away despite the opiates we keep feeding them.

Secondly, Mr Rees optimistically believes that in multicultural Britain, religious and national allegiances are starting to evaporate in favour of a local football allegiance and a rallying around the national team. In some respects I wish he were right but I fear religious and national allegiance is as strong as ever. Britain stomping around the globe supporting neo colonial wars certainly does not help matters.

If I had to choose between the tribalism of football against the tribalism of religion or nation I would choose the former every time but the reality of World Cup football and international sport generally, is you tend to get the former stoking the latter. So the unifying effect of the World Cup that Mr Rees like to trumpet is almost certainly a myth. Most likely each minority community within England will support their respective teams or the one closest to it, and given England’s brutal colonial past I would fully expect them to do so. I understand that the most popular football T-shirt north of the border goes under the initials ABE (anyone but England) I doubt if readers of The Telegraph would empathise or even understand that sentiment but that is because in all likelihood they were the beneficiaries of empire rather than at the receiving end.

The more interesting question we might like to ask ourselves is whether corporate sponsored football, which Rees himself says he is disillusioned with, is a suitable motor for community harmony let alone international harmony. Football may well be becoming the new international secular religion but if it breeds nationalism above internationalism it can hardly be regarded as much of a step forward. Religious or secular tribalism is equally debilitating to human progress and both act as an opiate in the minds of millions. The Telegraph chose a picture of joy filled St George painted faces to accompany Rees’ article but the picture gives me no joy, rather it fills me with a sense of foreboding.

There are two contradictory pulses intertwined in the globalisation of sport. On the positive side, globalisation of capital creates a global culture that ultimately draws every continent, every country and every citizen into its orbit. The nucleus of a global consciousness is sown albeit one riddled with cheap, dehumanising consumerist ideals. On the debit side global sport continues to foster national tribalism and all the associated crap that go with it. These two opposites, which admittedly have some degree of affinity, will continue to do battle for the foreseeable future.

The immediate reality is bleak; at the end of the first decade of the 21st century we are still locked in our petty national tribalism with anti immigration sentiment on the rise throughout Europe, and the bulk of the British press more than happy to stoke the xenophobic fires. While Rees and his ilk crave a mythical national unity, the neo nazi racists become ever more emboldened. What is actually required is not more national drum-beating but rather a stronger pulse of international unity that reflects the global nature of our common problems and prospects. If every team at the South African World Cup and every supporter around the globe sported, for example, the UNICEF emblem on their shirts, I might be tempted to believe in the FIFA unity hype a little more. How about FIFA adopt the ‘Make Poverty History’ slogan? That might focus a few minds whilst the global football carnival rolls on.

Surprisingly, The Times (9/6/10) came up with a real gem and a useful antidote to the ‘little England’ mentality of The Telegraph, via comedian, James Corden, one of their new World Cup columnists. Corden cleverly hit the crass English nationalism straight into touch with his very first column. Describing how recently, he and his mates were having a quiet drink and a quiet chat in a local bar when suddenly they were over-run by loutish, bear swilling football fans. Corden picks up the story. Then it happens, from over to our left we hear a chorus of: ‘Stand up if you hate the French!’ They just kept repeating it and getting louder with every repetition. Before we know it, everyone around us is standing, singing the same words with their arms outstretched. We are the only ones sitting down, all eyes are on us. It keeps going: ‘Stand up if you hate the French’.

To cut the story short, Corden and his mates sit firm and resist the pressure of the baying mob. Corden recounts, ‘I’m not standing, I say assertively. None of us are standing. Because we love England just as much as these guys, the only difference is we don’t hate anyone.’ This is the crux of the matter. If English nationalism could be an inclusive nationalism that reflects the international make-up of our population then supporting England would be a much easier prospect. But behind too much of our football nationalism lurks an ugly tribalism, xenophobic and outright racist in tone and content. For most national minorities in this country, the flag of St George is a symbol of bigotry rather than one of inclusiveness and although it is no longer the exclusive preserve of the BNP, for many UK citizens, it has yet to shed those viscous connotations.

Three cheers for James Corden and his mates.