Rod Liddle

It’s middle-class commentators – not supporters – who seem obsessed with the number of black players There were altogether too many darkies in England’s World Cup Squad for me to take any pleasure in their moderate achievements out in Russia. They did not represent me. I learned this via the Guardian in an article by a man called Steve Bloomfield who insisted that the team represented only the 48 per cent of Britons who voted Remain, because there were too many ‘players of colour’ in the side for the likes of us gammon-faced scumbag racist Leavers. Also, they were young. Apparently we ‘don’t usually like’ these kinds of people.

My lovely, wonderful wife was disconsolate. She went to bed, desolated. This is the problem with people who tune in for six matches every four years. They can't believe defeat. If she came to Millwall a little more often she would become inured. By a little more often I meant "ever". Defeat hurts more when you think it can't happen. I think that's how twenty million Brits were today. After they'd thrown the beer around for a bit, when reality set in. They can't believe it. And so it becomes a national tragedy, when really it's just another game of football lost. The trouble with tragedies is they prevent you asking stuff, because it's "too soon". I've got one or two questions I'd like to ask Lord Waistcoat, about tactics and substitutions. But it would be in bad taste to do so now.

Here is a letter which I sent today to the Russian Embassy. Please keep your fingers crossed for me. To: His Excellency Alexander Vladimirovich Yakovenko Dear Mr Yakovenko, I hope you are well. As you are aware, the World Cup is in progress and both of our sides are doing unexpectedly well in what has been an exciting and extremely enjoyable tournament. You are probably also aware that should England, by some miracle, reach the final, no dignitaries from my country will be present, as would normally be the case. They have effectively boycotted the event. No Prime Minister, no member of the cabinet, no Royals – not even the really useless ones, such as Edward or that Kent woman. This is churlish and mean-spirited of my government and I feel a little ashamed.

Anxious to find out what food they served at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, I clicked on the relevant site and was transported immediately to a discount motorcycle website entirely in Korean, or Japanese, or maybe Chinese. I don’t know — I can’t tell the difference between those respective hieroglyphics. Maybe that was the point: the restaurant was weeding out people like me who have never bothered to distinguish between different oriental alphabets and are therefore racist and banned from the Red Hen, probably for life. More likely, though, is that the site has been hacked by clever and jubilant Trump supporters.

But on the down side…... 1. Still too little quality and threat from open play. 2.  Raheem Sterling is very short of confidence for someone with a bad muthafucka AK47 tattooed on his leg. 3. The defence can still be horrendously dilatory and loose. As we saw with the Panama goal and three times in the first half when we gave the ball away pointlessly. 4. When Jordan Henderson tries to pass it forwards rather than sideways, it always goes out of play. I think it’s important that when your team wins 6-1, you sift through the entrails for the bad points. On the other hand, this is England’s best start to a world cup since they invented the world cup. Unless you count West Auckland.

I have been scouring the internet trying to find a right-wing festival to take the family to this summer. I don’t necessarily mean a kind of Nuremberg affair; just some sort of gathering where we won’t be hectored about the refugees and the NHS by simpering millennials with falafel between their ears. A place where you can be sure that the next act on won’t be bloody Corbyn, backed by a mass of lobotomised sheep chanting his name to that dirge by the White Stripes. Mind you, I wish I’d been at the Eden Sessions, a hugely right-on shindig held at the UK’s most stridently eco--friendly venue, the Eden Project in Cornwall.

The founder of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson, turned up in Leeds on Thursday to film people going into a grooming trial. He did not speak, chant, accost anyone or do anything other than point his mobile phone at attendees, from a distance. Nor was he with a crowd. Still, seven coppers turned up and bundled him into a paddy-wagon accusing him of a breach of the peace. I’m not remotely a fan of Robinson. But I do not like the idea that simply being Robinson is enough to get you arrested. Or that writing something in defence of Robinson puts you somehow beyond the pale.