 One by-product of aborted plans for a European super league is that Sky Sports News has become the home of the most interesting political debates in Britain. And the commentary during the Glazers out-protests was no exception. Now we're going to talk through one particular exchange. This was between ex-footballer Graham Sunus and ex-footballer Gary Neville, which, you know, and the debate really got to the heart of the ethics of modern capitalism. We're going to show you both sides, obviously. And we're going to start with Sunus, who defended the Glazers and put forward the classic capitalist argument that once you own a business, it's your right to do whatever you like with it. We live in a country where you can demonstrate, you can vent your feelings, you're allowed to do it. But I still don't see it impacting on the Glazers one little bit. If they think they can bring pressures to bear on serious business people who live 3,000 miles away across the Atlantic, that will drive them to accept a discounted offer from Man United. That will not happen. They're not ripping the life and soul out of Man United. They're paying themselves a dividend, which is business people having, whether they put money in, they would have to put collateral in. You don't just go to a bank and say, I want to buy Man United and need 500 million or whatever it costs them at the time without committing some sort of collateral. They risk something to buy Man United. Since then, they have given successive managers fortunes to spend. It was only when Fergie stopped that the success stopped. And I think that irritates supporters and they have become the focus of their anger. And I think it's directed from what happened last week in trying to form a super league. That certainly compounds their aggression and unhappiness towards them. But I would not be sticking the blame on Man United's lack of success down to the Glazers. I come back to it. There's no complaints when they're winning everything and they were in charge of some complaints. But in recent years, because they've dropped from being the number one team in the UK in English football, they've dropped below that. And I think that that irritates the supporters. There's always been an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the Glazers. And I think it's just come to a head over the last few weeks. But it's been there. They could sell the United tomorrow and make fortunes. I think they're entitled to it. It's their football club. They bought the club. They weren't soccer people. Yeah, this is an institution. This is one of the great footballing institutions in the world. They knew what they were buying. They knew, no matter how well the team were doing out there, they would still have a fan base, arguably second to none in world football. So this was a wonderful chance to buy us a great investment. And they've made a lot of money out of it. And why shouldn't if there was something on day one? And I think they've obviously made improvements in stadium, the commercial department, the success they've had, which goes back to Fergie. In terms of what they think about the fans, I think they proved two weeks ago in trying to form, when we heard of it two weeks ago, in trying to form a Super League, not a lot. Or what they're saying is we're taking the home base fans for granted, the new markets Asia. Let's talk about that. Now that was basically capitalist realist ideology just summarized in two and a half minutes. Because he's saying not only is they own it, they can do what they like with it. That's just life. It's the law. It's also morality. They bought it. So it's no one else's business, what they do with it. I mean, it's also quite, I think, misinformed, because he said, oh, they took a risk. They had to put forward the collateral to borrow that money to purchase Man United. The collateral was Man United. So it was a bit of a win-win for them. There wasn't risk. They said, like when you buy a house, you say, I'm going to buy a house. The collateral is the house. All that happens is the bank gets that. It's the house in a way. You're taking a risk with the house as much as with your own finances. Just significantly, in terms of, I suppose, the capitalist realist ideology of it, is that he was saying, not only is this moral and right, but if you disagree, there's nothing you can do. There's no point objecting to it. Why would you bother protesting because the glazes aren't going to care. They're in it for the money. They're in a different country. I think this whole protesting nonsense is pointless because you're not going to change anything anyway. A very, very, I suppose, pessimistic analysis, I thought, of the whole situation. For something that was, I mean, in complete opposition to what Sooner said, let's have a look at how Gary Neville responds. I get Graham's point around them paying themselves a dividend. We could walk into the chippy down the road tomorrow, make a bid. They could sell it and we could own the chippy and the local public might not be happy with the new chips that they get. I get that principle of a free market. However, the Glazer family two weeks ago, they tried to implement something that would have damaged every single community in this country that's got football at the heart of it. And that is why they're dangerous. Perez is dangerous. Laporte and Yelly, they are dangerous to the concept of equal opportunity and fair play in European football. Let's not forget what we're arguing about here. Today, there is anger. I would hope tomorrow it switches towards mobilisation towards reform and regulation and behind the fan-led review. And what I would say is, I accept and it might be a little bit naïve here. But when I talked two weeks ago about these two football clubs, Manchester United and Liverpool, they should act like the grandfather of English football, demonstrating compassion, spreading the wealth through the family, their experience, being fair. They haven't done, they've demonstrated self-greed and walked away with all of them, tried to walk away with all the money themselves and left the family struggling below. That is not what you do at this football club or at Liverpool Football Club. So whether the Glazer family have been good or bad, what they did two weeks ago is not acceptable and an apology is not good enough. And Joel Glazer is saying that he wants to rebuild the trust with the football fans of this club. He never had the trust. He's never communicated to them. He's never spoken to them. He's never said a word. So today we can be angry. The game may not go ahead. The fans are angry but they protested peacefully and we have to accept that you are allowed to protest in this country and it's every person's right. But tomorrow it's about reform and regulation because there are six or seven people with an English football who have it under their control. And that control has to be taken away from them. Now that was the opposite of a capitalist realist argument. So very well articulated actually. So he's saying essentially, even if free markets can work like this, this institution Manchester United is too important to be treated like a chippy, right? If you've got owners who are acting irresponsibly with this club, then because this is an institution, it's the centre of a huge community, it's not as if you can say, oh, well, I don't like the if Chippy gets bought up, say I don't like the chips here, I'll go shop in a different chip shop. You can't do that with Manchester United because it's an institution. You support it. You've lived your life with it. So the idea it can just be bought and sold like any other commodity is nonsense. So he's saying, you need to take into account the social consequences of ownership. And very importantly, he's saying, and we should take action to change it. Whereas Graham Soonus is saying, oh, there's no point in even bothering to change something. Even if you disagree, Gary Neville was saying, let's get organised. Let's change this. Let's rest control away from these billionaires who don't care about football and who don't care about the club. Ash, I want to go to you. I've got no doubt who you're going to agree with in that particular debate, but it was pretty interesting to see those big philosophical arguments come out on Sky Sports in a way that I don't normally see arguments that fundamental or that big picture on Sky News, on politics shows. Well, that's because of the nature of football. It goes right to the heart of your identity in terms of what community do you feel yourself to be a part of when it comes to notions of Englishness? And we talk about this all the time when we're talking about, oh, can you even have a progressive patriotism? Again, and again, what do we come back to? We come back to the English national football team and how we feel about it and who's a part of it and how it's represented in popular culture. Football is still, even though it's been taken away from its grassroots to such a huge extent, still it has this pull over us, which means that when you do have something so flagrant as a small coterie of billionaires, selling it off essentially in order to undermine the principles that made it great and appealing in the first place. Well, of course, it invites a very impassioned kind of political debate because it doesn't seem like the dry and dusty business of policy gets right to the heart of who we feel we are. And I think that's because of the specialness and uniqueness of football, really, when it comes to the national identity. When it comes to who I side with, obviously no surprises here. I think that Gary Neville got it absolutely spot on. What I felt was so revealing about what Soonus was saying was that it used to be that the case was made for capitalism on the basis of this is how you will have an improved standard of living and improved quality of life and it will make all the things that you love the most better. Because the minute you give those things over to people who will be custodians of it for profit, it means the quality of what you get back improves. And that's not actually what he was saying at all. So this is a very negative argument for capitalism. Like you say, it's a capitalist realist argument, which is, look, I'm not saying this is good, but there's nothing that exists outside of it. So what are you going to do? You may as well resign yourself to it now. Well, what we've seen in the past few weeks is that that's simply not true. With the actions of the clubs behind the Super League and Perez, you have a conservative government in the UK making noises about a 50 plus one rule that's entirely unheard of. If you want to think about different models of ownership, well, you don't even have to look that far. It's different in Germany because the law is different in Germany. And we still live in a democracy here. There's a lot of power with the legislature. And if we wanted to have a different model of ownership in football, it won't be because the glazes look within themselves and they find it within the goodness of their own hearts to hand over control to the clubs. It will be that football fans are deemed such an important electoral block in this country that change will happen. And that's actually what what people are afraid of here, because it is something which cuts across party is something which cuts across geography. And it's something which to a reasonable extent cuts across class as well. So that's what they're really worried about. So soon as as well as coming out with I think a very uninspired defense of capitalism, shall we say, is also I think he's talking out his behind. Because what we've seen is that over the past two weeks, just with strength of feeling alone, it forced the richest and most powerful people in the sport into a humiliating climb down. I mean, that's so true. It was so inconsistent, his argument, wasn't it? Because he was saying like, oh, look, they're not that bad. They have the interest of the club at heart, whatever, or at least they have the interest of the club enough at heart for us to let them keep it. And he's like, oh, but the European Super League, that was pretty outrageous. And also, yeah, we did stop them doing the European Super League. Just to say fans have no impact. If you've had your eyes open for the past two weeks, it's just it doesn't it doesn't make any sense. It's like internally incoherent.