 After being postponed for a year, Euro 2020 begins this week. I would have called it Euro 2021, but it's up to them. Alongside drama on the pitch, we already have an idea of what political controversies will accompany this tournament in England's warm-up match on Sunday against Romania. All players took the knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and a bunch of fans booed. Now, we're not going to show you direct footage of that moment because whenever we show you clips of football, the stream gets taken down. Instead, here's a video uploaded by a man watching in his living room. I mean, that was a hilarious video, but I mean, it's obviously a very serious topic. Jason, I want to bring you in on this. What did you make the booing? Were you surprised, disappointed? What's your reaction? I mean, I'm not really a football fan, but I know that England fan base kind of conducts itself like the social wing of the British army or something. And my understanding is that both here and in other countries, whenever there's a kind of English football victory or there's a match of some sort, they go around singing two World Wars, one World Cup, and then they have the audacity to say that you know, keep politics out of football when people decide to take a knee to mark their respect. So, of course, it's not surprising at all. I've heard lots of people talk about the poppy and stuff when they say, oh, people who say you should take politics out of football, then what about the poppy? The two World Wars, one World Cup, is a very good example. And let's go to England manager, Gareth Southgate. He had a really strong response, actually, I think. Let's take a look. Well, the first thing is that we are collectively really disappointed that it happened. I think you have to put yourself in the shoes of a young England player about to represent his country. And because we're all trying to support, move for equality, move for supporting our own teammates, some of the experiences they have been through in their lives, some people decide to boo. I think those people should put themselves in the shoes of those young players and how that must feel and if that was their children, if they're old enough to have children. How would they feel about their kids being in that sort of situation? So, the most important thing for our players is to know that we are totally united on it. We're totally committed to supporting each other, supporting the team. We feel that more than ever determined to take the knee through this tournament. We accept that there might be an adverse reaction and we're just going to ignore that and move forward. I think the players are sick of talking about the consequences of should they, shouldn't they? They've had enough, really. Now, that to me was exactly right. You're saying they're doing it in solidarity with victims of racism, including, you know, racism experienced by the players themselves and you're saying it's something the whole team believes in. It's non-negotiable. I'm not here to, you know, listen to and weigh up the arguments. We've had this conversation within the team. We're all agreed we'll be taking the knee and if that boils your piss, so be it. Obviously, he didn't use quite those words. Now, someone whose piss was boiled by Southgate's defence of his players was Nigel Farage. Let's take a look at his response. Gareth Southgate doesn't seem to understand that the BLM movement is not only Marxist but divisive too. The England fans will hate this. They just want to watch a game of football. Calling the Black Lives Matter movement Marxist or anyone who takes the knee or supports the Black Lives Matter movement. Marxist has become a bit of a meme on Britain's far right. In fact, I think Marxist was trending last night precisely because of this. Now, obviously on this show, we don't think there's anything wrong with being a Marxist. In fact, we think it's pretty cool. But a response from many people who take the knee or who are in support of this action is to say that it's kind of implausible to suggest that these millionaire footballers by taking the knee are endorsing some sort of Marxist ideology and this is a much simpler symbol of solidarity against racism. Yeah, I think it's interesting and that video of Gareth Southgate, he's pretty quite emotional about it and what I get the sense of is that he wasn't quite prepared for this level of backlash and hostility. That's because I've said this before, but I think that the Black Lives Matter movement at large at the moment was built and is still built on quite an unstable coalition because you have people who just think, I don't want my teammates to throw in bananas and I don't want the audiences to be making chip noises like they've done at some Black football players. And then you do have Marxists. You do absolutely have Marxists. You do have people who view anti-racism as the work of undoing racial capitalism. So when it comes to whether or not people should embrace Marxism or not, I'm all for people embracing Marxism and these ideologies and it's obviously ridiculous to claim that these England football players are Marxists at all considering their wealth portfolios. But I think it's interesting to work through the kind of contradictions and tensions and what's also being contemplated as well. Because of the actual institution Black Lives Matter UK, which does define itself as Marxist, which does define itself as pro-Palestinian, or at least it has members who are Marxists and is incredibly radical. Because this is seen as more radical and the BLM and because it uses the name BLM, it's always used as the front within the right wing process. I would say any reference to BLM is therefore invoking this very specific organisation and its specific operations and ideologies. That's not to make any kind of condemnation myself of the ideologies and the hidden motives of BLM, but it is being conflated with general support for at least the sentiment Black Lives Matter. And so it's kind of made the term kind of unsayable without you basically pledging that you align yourself with Karl Marx and you align yourself with communism and you align yourself with this dismantling of the state. So yeah, I think that's interesting whether or not people should embrace it. If footballers want to redistribute their wealth, I'm very open to that. Marcus Rapsford topped the financially list. I think it was something like that in the times. So I don't see a particular issue with that. I think that football can be like an inherently politicised sport because it's populated by so many working class boys who come through through rural talent. But yeah, a lot of people have found themselves in a really kind of sticky situation. And I think that an interesting example of this, moving away from football even, say for example, Pretty Little Thing, Boo Hoo, all those companies like that, last year came out with their kind of show the Black Lives Matter statements and said, we're in solidarity with Black communities that we're going to start supporting Black businesses and things like that. And then I think like a month later, the story about the Leicester factory workers broke and it was found that they were exploiting immigrants, majority, South Asian women and garment workers. And it's like that very chain of exploitation and the fact that they're subcontracting to infinity to the point where these women were being paid poverty wages is entirely counter to the principles of Black Lives Matter as most people understand them. It's not just about treating people nice and not saying racist things to people. It's also about the working conditions of people of colour and Black people. It's also about the conditions that place is close to death as well. And so these different corporations and these different brands can't quite understand that actually they can't declare and make these statements about Black Lives Matter when they are not just complicit, when they are literally running the machinery which is placing people's lives close to and close to danger and close to and close to death. And that's not really a charge that I can make of the England football team or the England football players or something like that because it's not a corporation in that sense. But it's interesting. I kind of think, you know what, this is what you guys are timing up for. And I almost kind of like the challenge. And obviously it's difficult for the Black football players and they are kind of bearing the brunt of that. But it's also very interesting to see why people are actually kind of drawing and seeing that actually if you want to make this stand and say, oh, I want to support my colleague because it's getting racist abuse. You might also want to look at this entire spectrum of oppression and action which is happening outside because as much as what's happening to a fellow football player on the pitch is you know, condemnable, that Black football player was also not the kind of ground zero. He's also not the most oppressed person in the context of the kind of like food chain of who's being fucked over by the same and who's not. So I think maybe perhaps it could help somebody's footballers to kind of stop and think, you know, why is the reaction so aggressive if it's just about, you know, how we treat people to think actually beyond that. Perhaps we can start to see the in the football team to become more politicised. I would be quite interesting to see that invigorate an interest in football, which I don't have a moment. Well, it's interesting you say that because it does seem that in this situation once again they found themselves on the other side of a political debate with the Prime Minister. So the previous obvious example here was Marcus Rashford campaigning for free school meals over the summer holidays and Boris Johnson eventually had to back down on that particular issue. I think eventually in autumn there was a period where there weren't free school meals over the holidays because in that period of time Boris Johnson didn't back down. Obviously completely outrageous. He didn't make him look particularly good. But on this one again, he seems to be saying, look, these footballers might think one thing, I think another. The Prime Minister's spokesman refused to condemn the fans booing. That's obviously very different to what Gareth Southgate was saying. Gareth Southgate saying it was very disappointing to hear them boo. The Prime Minister refuses to condemn it. On whether or not the Prime Minister supported taking the knee, the spokesperson said, the Prime Minister's spoken on the record on this issue before, on taking the knee specifically, the Prime Minister is more focused on action rather than gestures. We have taken action with things like the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities and that's what he's focused on delivering. Boris Johnson is almost in a way taking on the language of the radical left by saying, I'm not interested in symbolism. I'm interested in action. But then his example of action is the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities, which was pretty much written off as just an exercise in saying racism doesn't exist. And at the same time, what I want to know is do you think this is a mistake for the Prime Minister to constantly find himself on the other side of political debates with footballers who are obviously some of the most popular influential people in the country? Or do you think this is potentially an intentional strategy, a bit like Donald Trump and players in American football? I feel that actually quite strategically Boris Johnson tends to keep his interventions in the cultural to a minimum, all things considered. I think that you tend to hear from Robert Jenrick or Oliver Dalden more. On the kind of statement of I'm more into action in the sense that it is a case of co-opting the language of radical anti-racism and of the left, I'm not about the superficial and the ancestors of it. But then the action that ends up getting taken is by redefining what he considers to be racism. And with the Commission on race and ethnic disparities, I think that's something that was missing from a lot of the public discussion from that was that it's attempting to shift away the definition of racism from anything institutional anything that implicates government, anything which implicates our prisons or education system to look at individuals and individual liberty in the sense of autonomy and self-determination, because that's the kind of language of this government about levelling up about helping individuals unlock their powers. So when the Conservative Party at large started speaking about racism, they took in defence of say, Preeti Patel or Kenny Badenok, they kind of forced to think in one way or they're being disciplined by the left and by other minorities because they're Conservatives and because there's this kind of perceived incompatibility between being Conservative and being a black or brown person. So the focus is kind of there. And so I imagine the kind of action that he imagines is that he's going to appoint some black Secretary of State or things like that. That action for Boris Johnson, action for him is taking kids out of prison for minor wee defences. That action for him isn't actually implementing a comprehensive public health strategy for life kind of London, for example. It's all about benefiting those around him and kind of enabling a kind of like black and brown tourism and enabling this kind of share in the capitalist pie for certain black and brown people. That's action for him. Whether it's wise for him to be kind of war on football as well, since we have no seriously functioning opposition at the moment. But I think that it's a great way with it. You think that going up against Marcus Rashford is very popular, it would be something which would massively den his popularity. I think that from Dominic Cummings testimony it was revealed that his advisors were saying you don't want to pick on a fight with Marcus Rashford. But I think that what's kind of abhorrent in this sense is that it's not politics, it's just about feeding kids about benevolence and things like that. He has to do that because a charity door because if you're working with charities you can't be explicitly political partisan. But then to the kind of wider public it does mean that it becomes somehow it becomes depoliticised in the heads. It's kind of more seen as a kind of dispute that's taken to task and a kind of like celebrity philanthropic influence rather than a kind of like real interrogation of government and the very basis of government and the very basis of how this Government works. It should be the Labour Party kind of defining the ideology of the Conservatives and how they operate right now and the reason why Marcus Rashford has campaigned what it can't explicitly say to self as political but it's necessary because of the consequences of the past 11 years of Tory austerity. But where the fuck are they? So yeah, he's getting away with that. It's a good place to finish that segment on. Obviously a reference as a reference to the Labour Party. The footballers they are actually standing up to be counted.