Is English Football apolitical or a pursuing platform for right wing populists? 

On the 6th September, England hosted Andorra in a World Cup qualifying match in Villa Park. Videos surfaced online of fans singing, “Keir Starmer is a w**ker”. Three days later, when England travelled to Belgrade, fans in their dozens sang another politically oriented chant; “Stop the boats, stop the boats, Nigel Farage” “We’re all voting Reform UK. Lower down the English football pyramid, chants similar to those sung by the English fans are occurring more regularly. Just last week, fans from championship club Portsmouth were seen to reiterate the “stop the boats” slogan.

As evident by the aforementioned chants, it’s clear that football  politicisation is on the rise, but why is this the case and why is the Premier League (the most watched and lucrative league on the planet) vastly depoliticised compared to its lower league counterparts and the national team? 

Stark contrast at Elland Road

Football in the 1980s was a hotspot for political movements. Rory Smith from the Libero Podcast described how Elland Road (Leeds United Stadium) was essentially “a recruiting ground for the National Front”, with NF magazines and stickers all outside the ground; racist chanting and bananas being thrown at black players. The National Front is an extreme right-wing political party in the UK which advocates anti-Semitic and racist views, often involved in hostile and violent actions. The violent element of the National Front appealed to the football hooligan demographic. Likewise, NF members saw football as a gold mine to recruit young males with similar interests. In contrast, Rory mentions going to see Leeds take on Bournemouth last September and noted no political chants being used, despite the highly controversial Unite the Kingdom protest bringing 100,000 protesters to voice their opinions in London, two weeks earlier.  

More Business, less Politics

Apart from the odd historical political chant from specific clubs, such as when clubs from Yorkshire play clubs from Nottinghamshire, there can be shouts of ‘scabs’ or ‘scabland’ as only a quarter of Nottinghamshire miners went on strike during the miner strikes in 1984 and were among the first to stop striking. 

Aside from this, the Premier League has certain organised campaigns throughout the season. Campaigns such as supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, where players take the knee from kickoff.  The rainbow laces campaign is another, in which they are replacing this season with their own LGBTQ+ initiative. Additionally, in the leadup to Remembrance Day on November 11th, players wear a poppy on their shirts to pay respect to soldiers who have lost their life through war and support veteran charities.  

While the Premier League would class these movements as apolitical, many would argue that they are political movements; therefore technically the Premier League has political messaging. However, movements by supporters outside the stadiums or chants inside are a rare occurrence in the Premier League. This is something that’s subtle but not fully the case across stands in lower league national team grounds. The European Championships of 2016 was in the middle of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum (Brexit) . Chants of “we’re all voting out, we’re all voting out” among British supporters was a regular occurrence in France throughout the tournament .

One predominant factor as to why the crowds in Premier League grounds have largely yet to fall into political chanting is due to their breakaway from the football league. The Premier League was created in 1992. This meant clubs could negotiate their own TV rights and not have to share revenue equally across the ninety-two clubs from all divisions. BskyB (Sky Sports) blew free to air ITV out of the water with a five year package of £304 million to exclusively air the shiny new Premier League. The current deal today is 6.7 billion.  This, as well as the Taylor Report 1990 ( Which required an overhaul of stadia, and safety regulations after the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989) made the league a product more attractive to investment overseas. Since 1992 Russian oligarchs, such as Roman Abramovich, American billionaires and even sovereign wealth funds in the case of Newcastle United have all owned and invested heavily in premier league football clubs. This has ultimately led to the Premier League being the richest league in the world, attracting the best players as well as gaining a global audience.

Following a similar philosophy to Margaret Thatcher’s economic policy just years beforehand, where government-owned industries were sold to private investors, the new polished Premier League became a primary entertainment asset. Over the years this has changed the demographic of people attending Premier League games. Crowds are often international or more urban/metropolitan, compared to smaller, lower league clubs. This naturally leads the Premier League to be more depoliticised.     

Reform UK and football

The chants in Belgrade that were previously mentioned are in reference to Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage. Initially founded as the Brexit Party in 2018, it was changed to Reform UK officially, by the Electoral Commission in 2021. The name change was actioned to capture their other political stances, post Brexit talks. 

Its policies are strong on immigration, where its 2024 election manifesto precisely outlines its intentions on the matter: “pick up illegal migrants out of boats and take them back to France”. Other interesting policies include abandoning all existing carbon emission targets, making the school curriculum “more patriotic” and enforcement of “zero tolerance” policing. 

The Reform Party has many friends within the game of football. Former Aston Villa player Stiliyan Petorv, who made 219 appearances for the club between 2006 and 2012; has a son Stiliyan Jr who is officially running for Reform within his local constituency, Lapworth and West Kenilworth. Additionally, Sir John Hall, an ex-Newcastle United chairman, is an open supporter of the party.   

Farage is an ally of US President Donald Trump, who constantly showed support throughout the 2024 US presidential election. Trump repaid Farage by extending appreciation to the Englishman, labelling him a “rebel” and the “big winner of the last UK election”. 

Both political leaders seem to be aware of the influence the world’s most popular sport can have on their parties. Trump has regularly been pictured in public gatherings with FIFA president Gianni Infantino ahead of the 2026 World Cup, where the US will be hosting alongside Canada and Mexico. He is often seen discussing the World Cup and boasting its potential monumental success to the United States. The revenue injections of World Cups alone will satisfy the 47th president of the United States. The spectacle and spotlight is another, as we saw a glimpse of during the FIFA Club World Cup this summer as Trump was right in the mix of Chelsea’s trophy celebrations.    

The Reform party tapped into the football market by releasing Reform FC football jerseys in August. The jerseys are priced at £39.99 and £99.99 for a signed Farage version. Pictures show Farage in the centre, posing with jersey ‘Farage 10’ on the back. He is followed behind him by other leading figures of the party with their respective names on the back followed by the number 29. The number is referencing the next UK general election. British GQ has linked the Reform jerseys to MAGA baseball caps. 

Farage was once keen on keeping politics out of football, as he voiced in 2021, when the English national team took the knee for BLM. Many have seen the jersey launch as hypocritical and a U-turn on Farage’s policies. 
There is no denying that the football jerseys are a clear tactic into gauging an increasing ‘middle class’ audience in the UK, another clear target audience for the populist party, capitalising off  the demise of the Tory party in recent years. Anand Menon, who is a professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London, stated in a recent “The Athletic” article, that the jerseys are “capitalising on the gentrification of football.”

Tommy’s ties with football

Far-Right activist Tommy Robinson, who organised the recent Unite the Kingdom protest, also has ties to football.Tommy’s real name is actually Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. The name Tommy Robinson was taken from a well known member of a Luton Town hooligan of the MIG (Men in Gear) firm. The firm was set up in 1982 and was one of many hooligan setups across the country around that time. Often involved in brawls with other clubs’ hooligan firms, they gave English football a bad reputation and ultimately made it unsafe to attend football games. The consequences of football hooliganism led English clubs to be banned from UEFA competitions for five years, after the Heysel Stadium disaster. The tragic event, often described as the worst day in European football, was when Liverpool fans attacked Juventus fans in the 1985 European Cup final, causing a collapse from a wall inside the stadium. This led to thirty nine deaths, and up to six hundred injured. Whilst Liverpool fans caused the rush, authorities took massive blame for using an inadequate stadium that failed inspections prior to the disaster, having a ‘neutral section’ in the crowd and failing to deal with the confrontation of supporters an hour before kickoff.  

Robinson is known to be a football fan and was aligned with the Football Lads Alliance in 2017. The group, though claimed to be ‘anti extremist’, are tied with far-right politics. The Premier League had to step in to warn clubs about the group using stadiums to push an “anti Muslim agenda”. Founder of the English Defence League, Robinson has been arrested on a number of occasions from assault charges to fraud. Despite this, due to his football background and the leftover culture of soft hooliganism, particularly in smaller EFL clubs, Robinson has gained support from football fans. It could be argued that he is in fact using football as a platform to capitalise on his extremist political views. Luton Town, (Robinson’s favourite team) were “disappointed” after hearing chants of his name, inside their stadium in 2018.  

Football Politics on the continent

Across Europe, many specific clubs are tied with certain political ideologies and movements. Famously, St. Pauli of the Bundesliga in Germany is a left-leaning club. The club often uses a skull and crossbone flag (Jolly Roger)  to represent themselves as a symbol of rebellion. The club is strong for standing up for anti-fascism, LGBTQ+ rights and their community. 

Although the club is not officially political, S.S Lazio of Rome have particularly right-wing origins, specifically from their Ultras. There are reported ties of nationalist groups and symbols of fascism as well as political derogatory. An example of this was when Lazio hosted Celtic in a champions league match in November 2023; where Ultras unveiled a banner stating “The famine is over. Go home f*cking potato eaters”.

Individually, English Clubs don’t really have specific political ties generally speaking, in contrast to many clubs in Europe. Football more broadly speaking however, has been used by political parties in the past. The game would have been seen as a more working-class sport throughout the twentieth century and thus many fans would have been Labour supporters. There is a famous image of former Labour leader and Prime Minister, Tony Blair, playing head tennis with Newcastle United manager Kevin Keegan. This photo was a perfect representation of football and politics in the United Kingdom at this time. This is especially the case in traditional industrial cities such as Newcastle, who were transformed by the Conservative party’s de-industrialisation under Thatcher. 

Fast forward to today, Labour is rapidly losing support in these cities, meaning an opportunity for a new party to swoop in, which Reform seems to be winning the race at this current moment. This trend of populist right-wing parties growing in popularity is not exclusive to the UK, with populist radical right parties now ranking among the top three political parties in a third of European countries. 

The future of English Football and politics

With all that’s going on with Geo-football politics around the World Cup, Dr Danny Fitzpatrick, from Aston University Birmingham states that “We’re seeing the symbolic power of football now”. Whilst it’s not as intense in mainstream English football yet, politics is starting to rumble under the surface of football in England. The reality is the more populist parties such as Reform, continue to grow within the country, the ripple effect will trickle down to football. Politicians are beginning to recognise the footballs fans value as a demographic to influence and win over on election day. 

The irony of this growth in right-wing politics amongst football fans, is that football is recognised as the global game, a game of inclusion and togetherness. Their clubs are full of fantastic footballers from all over the world, from various different backgrounds. The Premier League is so successful thanks to foreign investment, foreign markets and a global fanbase. These fundamentals to the success of the game in the country don’t align with many of these ‘right, ‘populist’ ideologies of nationalism and anti immigration. 

While the Premier League has a wider multinational audience, we could soon start to see politics be more involved within the stands and outside the stadiums, if support continues to grow for Farage and the Reform Party. People say in politics that the power is in the towns rather than the cities. The influence of the Reform party in smaller towns and suburbs is reflected throughout their football clubs, where sections of these fans are chanting slogans and key figures of the party.