Friday morning will tell us a lot about where we are as a country.
The signs aren’t good, as you know. We are divided along social and economic lines.
Politicians have been abandoning their cultures as well as their principles in the hope that they are left with a chair when the music stops.
When a picture like that of four-year-old Jack – asleep on a hospital floor under coats because of a lack of beds – appears on the front page of the Daily Mirror, some cold-hearted souls have the temerity to suggest it is staged rather than a damning indictment of the shocking lack of investment in our health service.
And all that’s before you even get to the blatant, naked xenophobia from Boris Johnson.
A year ago, Premier League footballer Raheem Sterling accused some
sections of the media of helping to “fuel racism” with their portrayal of young black footballers.
Last week in an exclusive interview with the Mirror, Aleksander Ceferin, the head of European Football’s governing body UEFA, accused the British Prime Minister of fueling racism full stop with his xenophobic comments about Muslim women.
Sky Sports’ football presenter Gary Neville agreed.
Over the past year we have gone backwards as a country. The rancid elements of our society are seeping through, drawn out by the dog-whistle politics of a man with no shame.
For Johnson to declare – three days before we go to the polls – that EU migrants have been able to “treat the UK as if it’s part of their own country” for too long, tells you everything about the man, his politics and what he will do to this country if he retains power.
Ceferin was willing to take the deserved stick from fans and players for his organisation’s poor record on punishing guilty clubs and countries.
But he’d not take it from someone trading so openly on the bigotry that empowers idiots aiming monkey gestures at footballers.
The trouble is, they keep coming.
And, when presenters are more consumed by selfies with Johnson or whether Jeremy Corbyn has watched the Queen’s Speech or not, it allows a man whose views would get you sacked from your place of work to escape the scrutiny his conduct deserves.
