Euro 2020 is over but football continued to dominate headlines this week as Boris Johnson and Priti Patel became embroiled in a racism row.
England players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka were targeted with racist abuse online after missing vital penalties in the shoot-out against Italy in Sunday night’s final. The abuse was immediately condemned by a string of high-profile figures including both the prime minister and his home secretary.
But the duo fell foul of critics who accused Johnson and Patel of hypocrisy over their failure to support players taking the knee, which the home secretary had previously described as “gesture politics”. England player Tyrone Mings tweeted: “You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘Gesture Politics’ & then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against, happens.”
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As pundits got the boot in, Johnson faced further criticism from his own MPs after seeking to reassure the Conservative faithful in the party’s southern heartlands that they won’t be left behind by his “levelling up” agenda. “We don’t think you can make the poor parts of the country richer by making the rich parts poorer,” the PM insisted during a speech in the West Midlands.
Some Conservative MPs remain unconvinced, however, with inside sources predicting that Johnson’s promises would fail to soothe “disillusioned” southern Conservative voters, amid growing fears of a revolt in the Tory shires.
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Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?
Over in the US, Joe Biden launched a pushback against restrictive new state election laws. In a tub-thumping speech, the president accused Republicans of trying to pull off the greatest curbs on US voting rights since the Civil War, by pushing through reforms that were “undemocratic”, “unpatriotic” and “un-American”.
In Covid-related news, Indonesia overtook India as the Asian nation with the most daily new infections. Indonesia reported more than 54517 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday - a new single-day record for the struggling nation - with experts warning that the healthcare system could be on “the brink of disaster” if the spread of the virus continues to accelerate.
Back in the UK, government scientists fear the nation is close to is “close to maximum take-up” of Covid vaccinations, even though a significant proportion of young people have not be inoculated. Under-30s have the highest rates of “vaccine hesitancy”, according to official data - a hesitancy that is fuelling fears about a predicted summer wave of infections after coronavirus restrictions are lifted on so-called Freedom Day.
