You may not like it but Boris Johnson will benefit from England’s Euro 2020 success

Major sporting achievements reflect back on a country’s leader. And it has to be said, not for the first time, that Boris Johnson is an incredibly fortunate politician, writes Mary Dejevsky

Boris Johnson with his wife Carrie at Wembley on Wednesday evening (The FA via Getty)

The riotous joy that erupted after England’s 2-1 victory over Denmark in the semi-final of Euro 2020 on Wednesday signified so much more than shared satisfaction in a football win. It hardly matters now what happens on Sunday – well, it does, but not nearly as much as it might have seemed last week. Just to reach the final is almost enough.

The victory over Denmark serves as a kind of marker. It came after a crucial win over Germany and the trouncing of Ukraine, sealing the end of what has been described in the football fraternity as decades of national humiliation – the “55 years of hurt”. It also supplied the most complete antidote to the pandemic to date, unleashing an exuberance contained for the best part of 18 months by draconian restraints on spontaneity in any form. For two hours and more, tens of thousands of people gathered in one place were allowed to sing, hug and kiss with impunity. And for a short space you could stop the traffic, climb on to the top of a double-decker bus and wave a flag without social distancing.

You don’t have to be a football fan, or any kind of sporting aficionado, to appreciate the transformed collective mood. Some of the spoilsports on social media were surely right when they queried the granting of that penalty, and I was ignorant enough to wonder whether scoring from the rebound of a saved penalty was actually OK. But for the moment it is like one of those films that switches in a second from black and white to colour and the whole thing springs to life. What better prelude to “Freedom Day”?

At the national level, sporting success has always meant more than success at just sport. Internationally, it helps to define a country’s image. At home, it helps boost national morale. According to a bank survey this week, reaching the final of Euro 2020 could give the UK economy a boost of £50m or more. Even those of us whose interests incline more to the tennis or the cricket cannot deny that football remains the unquestioned national game – by participation, following and, of course, money – and is something for which this country is famed abroad.

Thanks to modern communications, we live in comparative, and competitive, times. The pandemic has shone a light on the performance of practically every country and every government, when confronted with a virus that was hitherto unknown – and the UK, but particularly England in the early months, did not emerge well. It was not until the vaccines came along that the country started to feel better about itself. The smiles and gratitude evident at the vaccination stations were proof of that, but so was the speedier roll-out compared with much of Europe.

Now the football. For years we have been a country that regarded every match as a nail-biter and its national team as more likely to lose than win. As such, though we sometimes disguised this with a touch of self-deprecating humour, it was the faithful reflection of a country that risked turning all it touched to dross – from ill-considered wars, to scandalously lax fire-safety, to miscounting migration.

Not that the gloom was always unrelieved. Every now and again, sport became a saviour. Remember the cynicism that attended preparations for the London Olympics. Then suddenly it all came right; the fans came and had a ball; Team GB started winning medals; Union Jacks were waved, and what had been the butt of national jokes became a source of national pride.

International sports events have that power to motivate and transform, which is why, despite all the costs and disruption to normal life, countries still bid to stage them. The 2006 Fifa World Cup in Germany has become a reference for the point at which the unified country came properly together, forged a new, modern patriotism and showed a fresh and welcoming face to the world. The World Cup in Russia in 2018 became not just a source of pride to Russians, not just a showcase for its president, Vladimir Putin; it opened this vast and various country to outsiders in a way that had never happened before.

Of course, such sports gatherings also – and inevitably – reflect back on a country’s leader. And it has to be said, not for the first time, that Boris Johnson is an incredibly fortunate politician. Not only has his particular brand of popular appeal given him a free pass in aspects of personal behaviour that could have damned most other politicians, but his gambles – so far – have paid off.

He backed Leave against the Cameron-Osborne establishment’s Remain. His decision not to stand for the Conservative leadership immediately after the 2016 referendum left him free to succeed Theresa May and “deliver” Brexit. His snap winter election brought him a landslide majority. His luck seemed to give out with the pandemic, which derailed his government and threatened his life, but then came the vaccines. And now English football’s best performance for half a century. At Wembley.

Like it or not – and his many detractors will certainly not – Boris Johnson will be able to bask, for a while at least, in the reflected glory. And it gets worse, at least for those of us who had hoped we would stay in the European Union: that glory is being won by England – which voted for Brexit – in a European competition. The 1966 World Cup victory came before the UK had joined what became the European Union; England’s next best international footballing performance comes after we left. That Johnson bent the country’s quarantine rules to let an army of Uefa officials in has already been forgotten and forgiven.

And for those who can’t stomach Johnson, there is his opposite, in the person of Gareth Southgate, to stand for England. The patently competent, responsible, low-key and inclusive team manager offers the perfect foil to Johnson’s laxity and excess. Take your pick.

In the longer term there could be more bonuses for Johnson. One concerns the Union. To be sure, there were Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish cheering the Danes on Wednesday, who will also cheer for Italy on Sunday. Such are the forces driving the United Kingdom apart in the wake of Brexit. But if the Union’s biggest nation can vaunt some success, the tide could turn. Note how low a profile Scotland’s first minister has taken recently.

The other by-product of England’s footballing success could be in helping forge a post-Brexit national identity, whether for England or for the UK. The England team under Southgate is being hailed as a model for the increasingly diverse country that England is today. But English identity has long been problematic, in being seen by minority groups as being by definition white. Scottish identity has no such difficulty. According to a recent academic study, sport, and football in particular, could be changing this, but institutions, national festivities and symbols all need to be harnessed – harnessed, not changed – to generate a sense of common national purpose. I would add that all sporting fixtures involving national teams should be free to view on television; the following for cricket as a national sport has been severely damaged by its banishment to subscription TV.

At least everyone has been able to watch Euro 2020. So, all being well, after watching the tennis on Sunday, I will watch the football, too. Not for the football, as such, and not even for the sport, but because the match promises to be a great national occasion – and one that, whatever the result, holds out the possibility of England’s long sense of cynicism and failure being replaced with hope and success.