The Prime Minister has ended this working week by condemning an operational decision by the West Midlands Police force and Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group. The two bodies last night announced they would ban fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv, an Israeli football team, from attending a match against Aston Villa at Villa Park next month.
Keir Starmer pretty much instantaneously called it the “wrong decision”. There has been outrage across politics and civil society, with some claiming the decision was motivated by anti-Semitism. This comes after a long campaign by local independent MPs to stop the match going ahead. They think Israeli teams should suffer a cultural boycott because of the war in Gaza.
No 10 is keen to get ahead of this issue and Starmer’s spokesperson has told journalists to “expect to hear further updates”. They said that “conversations” are happening “at pace, across government, with all the relevant groups to find a way to resolve this”. The Government is trying to force a U-turn so that the game goes ahead with a few thousand Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in attendance.
It is very important for the Prime Minister that he manages to overturn the original decision. Why? Because he is now getting a reputation for giving outraged commentary on events while struggling to exercise his power as PM to influence those same events.
We saw that dynamic play out just two weeks ago. Following the terrorist attack on Crumpsall synagogue, it was expected that pro-Palestinian demonstrators would take to the streets on that weekend. A number of Jewish community leaders said they thought it would be wrong and indeed dangerous for that to happen.
The PM took to the pages of the Times to express his views. He described the prospective protests as “un-British”, but didn’t explain in any detail what he meant by this. He urged protestors not to go out onto the streets. They did anyway. Such instances add to a general characterisation of him as a weak leader that has been building in the country – if you look at the polling – and in his own party since the welfare cuts climbdown earlier this year – if you speak to Labour MPs.
What’s worse in this case is that the Government seems to have known this decision was coming from West Midlands Police. The Football Policing Unit said it briefed the Home Office last week that there was likely to be a ban. It seems there was no intervention from the top and the ban happened anyway. It was only last night that the deluge of outrage came from the PM and senior ministers. We were once again told by the PM’s spokesperson that he personally had heard nothing about it until the news broke. Undoubtedly the truth, but it’s becoming an awfully familiar refrain (see also the China spy case this week).
The reasoning behind the decision has been multifarious and confused. Was the reason, as given by the safety advisory group and the police, an interest in the safety of all because of fears of clashes? Or was it some great political strike against the state of Israel in response to the war in Gaza? Supporters of the decision have conflated the two.
The Green party is drawing a dividing line. It’s deputy leader Mothin Ali said this should be the first step on the road to a total ban on Israeli football teams coming to Britain. In a statement Ali said: “We need a sporting and cultural boycott of all Israeli teams, like we saw for South African teams under apartheid. International sporting bodies can and must take a stand when basic human rights are being violated.” The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign has described Starmer’s position as “blatant anti-Palestinian racism” because of possible “racist incitement” by the team’s fans.
There has been more general accusation that the Maccabi Tel Aviv team are inclined to hooliganism. There were violent scenes from Amsterdam in November last year when they played Ajax. Social media videos appeared to show Maccabi fans chanting “fuck the Arabs”, while some Maccabi fans reported anti-Semitic abuse. But if the team were in some way endemically disruptive, it would be a matter for UEFA to adjudicate on.
Then there is the wider question of cock up or conspiracy. One former chief constable, Sue Sim, has said the decision was probably made due to limited policing resources available to police the game which has been classified as “high risk”. So we get into the broader issues of state failure which have plagued Starmer in this case and others aforementioned, for example when it seemed he would have to choose between protecting synagogues after the Manchester attack or allocating resources to the policing of Gaza protests.
It’s probably unfair to say that Starmer has been ineffective at imposing his will in these cases because of a lack of effort. Rather he is grappling with threadbare policing resources inherited from the Conservative era. His administration hasn’t been able to turn this situation around, 16 months into government, despite the best intentions. And so, when it comes to the fundamental issue of policing the streets, he keeps giving the impression of being in office but not in power.
[Further reading: Britain isn’t safe for Jews anymore]
Content from our partners
Related
