Humiliated, disparaged and the object of global scorn for their lily-livered incompetence. But enough about the England rugby team. Last week was also deeply embarrassing for Sir Keir Starmer and his government. As President Donald Trump said of Britain’s Prime Minister: ‘This is not Winston Churchill we’re dealing with.’ One might say something similar about Steve Borthwick, England’s head coach. This is not Clive Woodward we’re dealing with. You remember Woodward, the man who in 2003 guided England to World Cup glory.
Those were the days when the England rugby team were the envy of the world; now they are the inept of the world. Pummelled by Scotland, thrashed by Ireland and mugged by Italy, England wrap up their Six Nations campaign with a visit to Paris tomorrow evening to face the tournament leaders.
If the humiliation heaped on the Royal Navy last week by their French counterparts was painful, just wait and see what their rugby team will do to England tomorrow. Put it this way: England have as much chance of success in Paris as Labour do in May’s local elections.
On reflection, the Labour government and the England rugby team have much in common. Let’s start with their leadership.
Borthwick and Starmer are out of their depth. They are robotic, over-promoted men incapable of inspiring their underlings. Both got where they are by default; Starmer was elected to office because voters were so desperate to get the Tories out; Borthwick was nominated head coach because the Rugby Football Union (RFU) was so desperate to get Eddie Jones out. Jones coached England from 2016 to 2022, and in that time the irascible Australian guided the team to a Grand Slam success in 2016 and a World Cup final three years later. His win ratio was 73 per cent; Borthwick’s is 59 per cent.
Under Borthwick’s leadership, England have lost for the first time to Fiji and Italy, and suffered record home defeats to France and Ireland. If – sorry, when – England lose to France on Saturday it will be the first time they have lost four matches in a Six Nations championship.
Neither Starmer and Borthwick are intuitive. The former makes his decisions according to international law and the latter ‘is driven by data’. Indecision racks the pair. It’s 16 policy U-turns so far for the Prime Minister (at least it was at the time of writing), and Borthwick’s team selections have become notoriously erratic.
After Ireland hammered England last month, Borthwick dropped nine players for the trip to Italy. He chops and changes players in key positions, such as hooker, fly-half and full-back. There is no stability and continuity to the team, and this has led to a lack of confidence within the squad.
Borthwick and Starmer are robotic, over-promoted men incapable of inspiring their underlings
Likewise, the cabinet don’t appear to have much confidence in the judgment of the PM. Starmer wanted to support Trump in his attack on Iran, according to reports, but he was overruled after a cabinet revolt. This is a sign of a weak leader. One of the mutineers was Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor who is unfailingly upbeat about the state of the economy despite all the evidence to the contrary. Following last week’s spring statement, Reeves was accused of being ‘delusional’ and ‘in denial’.
Those words sprang to mind after some of the England team defended their demoralising defeat to Italy. Ben Earl claimed that ‘large parts of the performance were brilliant’. A job in the Treasury awaits. Earl is a good player, and a veteran of the England side. He was one of three players who chose not to ‘take the knee’ at the height of the Black Lives Matter mania in 2020. The RFU left the decision to the players and most dropped a knee to the Twickenham turf, just as Starmer had done earlier in the year as leader of the opposition.
‘Wokeness’ is another thing that the Labour party and the England team have in common. The Prime Minister rebuked Sir Jim Ratcliffe last month after the tycoon suggested Britain was being ‘colonised’ by migrants. England’s captain, Maro Itoje, also rubbished Ratcliffe’s remarks, calling them ‘ridiculous’. Itoje is entitled to his opinion but is it wise in a team sport for a captain to air his views on such a divisive issue? Reading some of the thousands of comments left online by readers of the Times and the Telegraph, it was evident that most wished Itoje had kept his thoughts to himself. Team sports and politics are not a good mix.
England actually played well in their opening match of the Six Nations, a rollicking 48-7 win over Wales, but that was before Itoje responded to Ratcliffe. One wonders if some of Itoje’s teammates wished he had kept quiet? Who knows. But the most astonishing aspect of England’s collapse in the last month has been the evaporation of the team’s spirit.
Sam Warburton, the former British Lions captain turned BBC pundit, said last weekend: ‘Something is going on, I think, behind closed doors. [It] is not a camp which is all on the same page, who know what they are doing. It is very disjointed.’ This government and this England rugby team are so hopeless that people are voting with their feet. Record numbers of Brits are fleeing the country to escape what the Mail describes as ‘Starmer’s Socialist chaos’.
Rugby fans are running from Borthwick’s strategic chaos. Hundreds streamed out of Twickenham before the end of England’s abject defeat to Ireland last month. Some of them may have kept on going, running dementedly down Whitton Road to Twickenham train station and from there to Heathrow.
A one-way ticket, please. Anywhere will do. Except Paris on Saturday night.
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