Banned wagon
A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit
NEW Labour has long exploited foot- ball to increase its own appeal among the masses, so it was perhaps only a matter of time before it started to poke its nose into the running of the game. The employment select commit- tee (which consists of six Labour mem- bers and one Conservative) is concerned about the number of for- eign players in the premiership, and is pushing for a maximum of six per team. The idea is to boost the number of native English players and so help strengthen the national team.
Labour has nailed its colours so firmly to the mast of European inte- gration that it comes as a shock when its MPs show such blatant disregard for the central tenet of the single mar- ket: that citizens of member states be free to live and work wherever in Europe they choose.
Discriminating against football play- ers on the basis of their nationality is nonsense anyway: since few, say, Manchester United players actually come from Manchester, what differ- ence does it make if they come from Walton-on-Thames, Dublin or Milan?
In any case, there is no evidence that a partial ban on foreign players would do anything to improve the quality of the national team. County cricket already operates a protection- ist employment policy, with only one overseas player per team. The result is that it has become a game played by unmotivated laggards, which hardly anyone wants to watch, and the national side still undergoes ritual humiliation.
It makes you wonder whether the select committee's move isn't really just a crude piece of political games- manship, in that the club most affected would be Chelsea, whose team of ten foreigners and one Englishman won such admiration in the European Champions' League this season. Need- less to say, Chelsea play in blue, repre- sent a safe Conservative seat and boast several senior Tories, including David Mellor and John Major, among their supporters.
Ross Clark
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