LONDON: Does British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak risk scoring an own goal by calling an election during the 2024 European Championship soccer tournament in July?
Sunak, himself a soccer fan, might be hoping for a boost to his struggling campaign if England do well, although whether there really is a link between sport and elections is disputed by experts.
Given the national team’s habit of morale-busting defeats in major tournaments, the chance of another hit to the English psyche appears just as likely a backdrop to the election.
On a positive note, however, England, runners-up three years ago, are among the favorites under manager Gareth Southgate with a team full of in-form attacking players including Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka.
Sunak unexpectedly called a national election for July 4 when the European Championship in Germany will be entering its most exciting phase.
Voters will head to the polls four or five days after England’s first knockout match, assuming the team avoid the embarrassment of elimination in the group stage.
There is also a chance England will have been pitted against their hosts and old rivals Germany in that last-16 game, a prospect that will fill many fans with dread.
Scotland are competing in the tournament too, potentially offering relief to the ruling Scottish National Party which, like Sunak’s Conservatives, is floundering in opinion polls.
Political pundits have offered non-sporting explanations for Sunak’s decision to call an early election, including a fall in Britain’s once double-digit inflation to close to 2 percent and signs that his flagship plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda might not get off the ground.
The timing has raised eyebrows, however, for the unusual overlap of an election campaign with the summer sporting calendar.
That has raised memories of one of the most painful of England’s defeats.
In June 1970, a 3-2 loss to West Germany in a World Cup quarter-final was followed four days later by a shock election defeat for incumbent Prime Minister Harold Wilson, triggering debate about the impact of the match.
Much has been written since about a possible link between sport and elections.
A 2010 paper by academics at Stanford and Loyola Marymount University in the United States said wins for local college American football teams earned political incumbents an extra 1.61 percentage points of support in subsequent Senate, gubernatorial and presidential elections.
Others have found no clear connection.
Stefan Mueller and Liam Kneafsey, at University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin, mapped Irish election outcomes over decades with Gaelic football and hurling match results and found no correlation with support for incumbents or ruling party politicians.
Kneafsey said there were signs that some kind of influence on voters did occur.
“Whether they actually switch their votes, that’s probably a higher bar to clear and certainly the results there are inconclusive,” he said.
While that debate continues, it is clear that politics do weigh on the minds of soccer fans.
At a Euro 2016 match, three days after Britain’s shock Brexit referendum decision, many England fans joined in a crude chant directed at the European Union which ended with the words: “We all voted out.” England were beaten 2-1 by underdogs Iceland and were knocked out of the competition.
Another risk for Sunak is that sports fans resent his scheduling of the election at a time when not only Euro 2024 is taking place — from June 14-July 14 — but also the Wimbledon tennis championships which run from July 1-14.
Campaigning will also overlap with cricket’s T20 World Cup involving England and Scotland from June 2-29.
Some academics will be happy, however, as they will be able to do more research into the links between sport and voting patterns.
“We could actually do with politicians having more elections during this time to definitively test this,” Kneafsey said.
England’s soccer fortunes add sporting drama to UK election
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England’s soccer fortunes add sporting drama to UK election
Starmer arrives in China to defend ‘pragmatic’ partnership
- British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Beijing on Wednesday to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, hoping to restore long fraught relations
BEIJING: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Beijing on Wednesday to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, hoping to restore long fraught relations.
It is the first visit to China by a UK prime minister since 2018 and follows a string of Western leaders courting Beijing in recent weeks, pivoting from a mercurial United States.
Starmer, who is also expected to visit Shanghai on Friday, will later make a brief stop in Japan to meet with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
For Xi, the trip is an opportunity to show Beijing can be a reliable partner at a time when President Donald Trump’s policies have rattled historic ties between Washington and its Western allies.
Starmer is battling record low popularity polls and hopes the visit can boost Britain’s beleaguered economy.
The trip has been lauded by Downing Street as a chance to boost trade and investment ties while raising thorny issues such as national security and human rights.
Starmer will meet with Xi for lunch on Thursday, followed by a meeting with Premier Li Qiang.
The British leader said on Wednesday this visit to China was “going to be a really important trip for us,” vowing to make “some real progress.”
There are “opportunities” to deepen bilateral relations, Starmer told reporters traveling with him on the plane to China.
“It doesn’t make sense to stick our head in the ground and bury in the sand when it comes to China, it’s in our interests to engage and not compromise on national security,” he added.
China, for its part, “is willing to take this visit as an opportunity to enhance political mutual trust,” foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun reiterated Wednesday during a news briefing.
Starmer is the latest Western leader to be hosted by Beijing in recent months, following visits by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Faced with Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Canada for signing a trade agreement with China, and the US president’s attempts to create a new international institution with his “Board of Peace,” Beijing has been affirming its support for the United Nations to visiting leaders.
Reset ties
UK-China relations plummeted in 2020 after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, which severely curtailed freedoms in the former British colony.
They soured further since with both powers exchanging accusations of spying.
Starmer, however, was quick to deny fresh claims of Chinese spying after the Telegraph newspaper reported Monday that China had hacked the mobile phones of senior officials in Downing Street for several years.
“There’s no evidence of that. We’ve got robust schemes, security measures in place as you’d expect,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Since taking the helm in 2024, Starmer has been at pains to reset ties with the world’s second-largest economy and Britain’s third-biggest trade partner.
In China, he will be accompanied by around 60 business leaders from the finance, pharmaceutical, automobile and other sectors, and cultural representatives as he tries to balance attracting vital investment and appearing firm on national security concerns.
The Labour leader also spoke to Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Brazil in November 2024.
Jimmy Lai
The prime minister is also expected to raise the case of Hong Kong media mogul and democracy supporter Jimmy Lai, 78, a British national facing years in prison after being found guilty of collusion charges in December.
When asked by reporters about his plans to discuss Lai’s case, Starmer avoided specifics, but said engaging with Beijing was to ensure that “issues where we disagree can be discussed.”
“You know my practice, which is to raise issues that need to be raised,” added Starmer, who has been accused by the Conservative opposition of being too soft in his approach to Beijing.
Reporters Without Borders urged Starmer in a letter to secure Lai’s release during his visit.
The British government has also faced fierce domestic opposition after it approved this month contentious plans for a new Chinese mega-embassy in London, which critics say could be used to spy on and harass dissidents.
At the end of last year, Starmer acknowledged that China posed a “national security threat” to the UK, drawing flak from Chinese officials.
The countries also disagree on key issues including China’s close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the war in Ukraine, and accusations of human rights abuses in China.
