Priti Patel and Boris Johnson gave the nod to racists during the Euros

Taking the knee should be a fixture at every football match, because we see clearly now how football can become a hub and a channel for racism

It’s all “heartbreak for England” this morning, as well it might be. What’s much more heartbreaking than a draw with a fine Italian side – for that is the “actual” result – is the racism directed at England’s Black players.

For them, the trauma of (in their minds) letting their teammates down and letting their country down is made that much more unbearable by being told, well, you can imagine what they are being told via social media.

Their hearts are broken, they don’t deserve it, and anyone observing what is happening right now should have their hearts broken too. If there was any doubt that taking the knee was needed, it has now been swept away. Twitter isn’t Britain, but there is enough racism on there to suggest that all is not well, and that racial justice is some way distant still.

Taking the knee should be a fixture at every football match, because we see clearly now how football can become a hub and a channel for racism, as it has been since the 1970s when the first pioneering Black players began to appear. Things haven’t improved as we’d like to imagine.

Indeed, given what it says about wider society too, taking the knee should be extended, entirely voluntarily, to all manner of public gatherings, political meetings, social events and so on. It should be adopted by royalty and in Parliament, and nationally as part of our way of life.

It is said to be “divisive” and it is, but only because too many people think that racism doesn’t matter that much, or that it’s just another legitimate point of view, like wanting to nationalise the railways. Wrong: racism is violence and we are all against that.

What’s also heartbreaking, and has been for some weeks, is the behaviour of the likes of Priti Patel and Boris Johnson, who gave the nod to the racists. Not surprising, but still shameful. Why do they even now still refuse to attack the racists for booing players and officials for taking the knee? Why did they defend the fans for booing the gesture? Why did they deride it as “gesture politics”? What has yobbish behaviour at football matches got to do with free speech?

Patel and Johnson didn’t have to absolve themselves of their responsibilities as leaders. They could have suggested, as Sajid Javid and Nadhim Zahawi did to their credit, that dissenting fans  just stand in silence, just as you might listen to someone’s else’s reasoned argument in a debate.

Why did booing at taking the knee become the great totem of free speech in Britain? It is worrying because “free speech” is a cause that is now being debased by people who just want to be able to voice race and religious hate, to wind up minority groups and verbally abuse them.

The trouble has been coming for some time now. For months, long before the Euros tournament even kicked off, the likes of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and their allies studiously refused to criticise the football fans who booed when teams took the knee against racism and for racial justice, including the Black Lives Matter movement.

Dominic Raab ridiculed it – but also made a fool of himself – by suggesting it had something to do with Game of Thrones. Lots of them said they’d only take the knee for the Queen, and the police who did so at demonstrations were criticised for the “submissive” racial gesture – when it is nothing of the sort. It is a gesture of support for racial justice. Somehow that is never acknowledged.

The taking of the knee, a small act of solidarity against racism, and the BLM protests were twisted and lied about and used as yet another weapon in the culture wars. Taking the knee was equated with “Marxism”, whatever that was supposed to mean, mobs and street violence. It wasn’t and isn’t any such thing.

It is a quiet moment of reception and silence, a reminder to us of what we need to do to build a better society. But it suited politicians such as Johnson, Patel, Farage and some easily led Tory backbenchers to pretend that Raheem Sterling was the new Trotsky and that Gareth Southgate an agent of “deep woke”, a toothy version of Lenin. Maybe Brexit didn’t help either. As Southgate said in 2018, there were indeed “racist undertones” in the Leave campaign in the EU referendum. Makes sense.

The great irony of course is that Johnson and Patel pretend that racism isn’t that much of a problem in this country, but the response to the taking of the knee and the backlash overnight against Marcus Rashford (in particular) demonstrated all too painfully why such gestures and action are still needed. Racism is endemic. All the unfunny jokes and offensive emojis prove that to far too many people black lives don’t matter. Point proven.

According to the prime minister and the home secretary, Britain has come a long way, and if you’re a person of colour you are OK so long as you work hard and do your best. After all, look at how well Patel has done for herself. Well, maybe that’s not so obvious this morning to these young players who have indeed worked hard, done their best and who sang God Save the Queen lustily before every match they played, and yet been rewarded by being assaulted in this way.

It’s more than just hurtful stuff – it tells us that there is something still very wrong, for the social media racists are the tip of a considerable iceberg of quieter, unspoken, covert, unconscious racism and bias across society, something that it suits Patel and Johnson to ignore and deny.

When they bang on about stilling immigration and controlling borders they really do make people wonder why immigration now is such a terrible thing for Britain, but immigration of the past (including members of the Johnson and Patel families) was enriching and beneficial. Whether it is illegal or not seems beside the point if you think the multicultural society was a mistake and is a failure. That is what is being booed when they boo at the football matches and attack Black players.

The good thing about the wave of abuse is that it disproves the notion that Britain is some sort of land of equal racial opportunity, and the cause of racial inequality can only be down to the failings of the people from those communities, and nothing to do with prejudice in society at large. Johnson, Patel and the rest of them have been caught out once again for trying to gaslight people of colour. They’ve been getting away with it for too long.

I’m intrigued to learn what Gareth’s next game plan is. Not for some international game as we look forward to the World Cup, but the tactics for the squad at the inevitable “welcome home” receptions at Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. If I was Gareth Southgate I’d ask the team if they would want to take the knee before Boris Johnson makes his jolly hypocritical speech, or before Prince William gives his (in his case) sincere thanks on behalf of the nation.

I’d suggest to them that they blank Priti Patel if she dared to show her face in the room. But Gareth and the team are better than that, they’ll behave impeccably and do the right thing. They always do. They should keep taking the knee though, no matter what.