Have you noticed how we only win the World Cup under a Labour Government

06.06.26

Philosophy Football's Mark Perryman questions who this 'we' is Harold Wilson declares has only won a World Cup under a Labour Government 

In March 1966 Harold Wilson's Labour Party won a landslide victory and just four months later Harold was there to celebrate when England for the first, and to date last, time lifted the World Cup. Never mind the (disgraced) Peter Mandelson, England's victory spurred Harold to the greatest piece of Labour spin-doctoring ever. 

At the Wembley Final Harold infamously he sent one of his advisers to the BBC matchday studio to suggest the Prime Minister ,and lifelong Huddersfield Town fan, join commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme for some half-time punditry.  An invitation that was promptly turned down. P'raps the adviser lacked the (disgraced)silky charm of Peter Mandelson?! 

Four years later most unwisely Labour risked their 1970 General Election chances by choosing a date slap-bang in the middle of England's defence of their World Cup at Mexico '70.  The quarter-final defeat to West Germany  was widely blamed for Labour's defeat just four days later. 

Yes, really. Wilson's Minister of Sport, and former football League referee, Denis Howell, was better-placed than most to justify the impact. "The moment goalkeeper Bonetti made his third and final hash of it on the Sunday, everything simultaneously began to go wrong for Labour for the following Thursday," 

Labour and football, eh? Be careful what you wish for. Still at least 1970 General Election victor Ted Heath and his sundry Tory Prime Minister successors have proved incapable of robbing Harold's sound-bite of its enduring truth, 

But any kind of relationship between politics and international football in the particular context of England has a broader context than simply an England victory, defeat or draw supposedly being dependent on the party in government at the time. 

To understand this, take note of one crucial word that Harold gets spectacularly wrong, 'we'. Great Britain is unique in international football, represented by four - and for the purposes of football at least- independent nations. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  It doesn't require either pedantry or nationalism to recognise this. The fact neither Harold nor Keir, who every time a summer football tournament comes around will very publicly choose an England shirt for his go-to leisure wear, fail to understand the significance of football's multinational Britain tells us, or at least it should, everything we need to know about Labour Unionism. 

As a Scot Gordon Brown might have thought he was being helpful travelling out to support England at World Cup 2006 in Germany as the British Prime Minister. But precious few England fans were won over by this particular Scot's new-found England fandom while in his native Scotland it went down like a lead proverbial. Of course, not all Scotland fans are nationalists. But in 1992 when Jim Sillars lost his Govan seat he'd won in an infamous 1988 SNP by-election defeat of Labour he angrily denounced the Tartan Army as '90-minute nationalists' it was a very different era to now. The SNP are no longer a minor party via the Scottish Parliament it is a governing party with a formidable number of MPs at Westminster too.  Never mind 90-minutes ,a significant proportion of Scots today are 24-houes 365-days-a-year nationalists while in Wales and the North of Ireland Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein are both in government. Whatever the rights and wromgs Harold got away with 'we' in 1966 he certainly couldn't today. Yet Keir wears his England shirt regardless of what it says to our breaking-up Britain. 

Such confusion is both muti-faceted and deep-rooted in Englishness. World Cup Quiz question: which is the only team at this summer's tournament to line up before kick-off without a National Anthem of their own for them and their fans to belt out? England! God Save the King is the National Anthem of the United Kingdom, not England and just try asking the Scotland team to drop Flower of Scotland to join in too. 

This isn't pedantry, it gets to the core of Englishness, a contradictory mix of nationalism and unionism. The most vivid example of this recently has been  the spate of hanging flags, Union Jacks and St George Crosses, off lamp posts in a movement to 'Unite the Kingdom'. Much of this wrapped up in a version of English patriotism which does little to distinguish itself from bad old-fashioned racism. 

Contrast this to what Harold's 'we' has become. The Wembley 1966 final was full of Union Jacks, the St George scarcely present. The tournament mascot  'World Cup Willy' wore a Union Jack. Yes, the only time England has not only won, but hosted too, a World Cup and the FA got our flag wrong.  Few England fans this summer will make this mistake, the St George Cross universal, home and away. And in sheer numbers will absolutely dwarf those of the lamp post hangers too.  And the purpose dwarves them too. A St George Cross celebrating a multicultural team managed by a German on its own doesn't make for an anti-racist, Europeanised England but given the popular-political will are very welcome first steps in both directions. 

In July 2024 Keir Starmer's Labour Party won a landslide victory and just two years later Keir was there to celebrate when England for the second time lifted the World Cup at the New York New Jersey stadium. 

Well, that's one Labour pledge all of England can get behind. 

T-shirt The Philosophy Football Harold Wilson T-shirt is available here

Mark Perryman  has written a number of books on football, national identity and Englishness including 1966 and Not All That and is the co-founder of the self-styled ' sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction' aka Philosophy Football