Cheap jibes at football a bit rich from pompous MPs
PRImARK, The Ritz, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, the Brexit Party, Jd Wetherspoon, Harrods, Qatar Airways, Whitbread, Tui, the British national Party, these were just some of the businesses that benefited from Government furlough schemes during Covid.
Some of the richest men in the world caught a break, too: Jim Ratcliffe, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, mohammed bin Rashid almaktoum, Len Blavatnik, Teddy Sagi, Julian dunkerton, mohamed Al Fayed, Evgeny Lebedev, Lord Ashcroft, Philip Green, Guy Hands, millionaires, and some billionaires, whose companies made use of furlough.
Yet when Julian Knight, head of the digital, Culture, media and Sport Committee, ascended to his usual booster seat on the moral high ground, who did he have in his sights? Football clubs, naturally. Specifically, Leeds, newcastle, Burnley and Sheffield United who have all, like many in commerce, taken advantage of the scheme.
What does furlough do? It saves jobs. Positions of employment that would otherwise be lost. Arsenal did not use furlough, but laid off staff instead.
no doubt other football clubs would, too, without the safety net. What is to happen to catering staff at a ground that hasn’t opened in a year? Without furlough, they would have been made redundant months ago.
The Government does not want that. It would be crippling for the economy to have millions more unemployed during a pandemic. And if businesses throughout Britain have then taken advantage of this desire to protect the economy, why should football be different? The truth is, football isn’t different. It’s just an easy headline for another grandstanding politician. ‘The Premier League clearly has questions to answer and should be held accountable,’ Knight (below) parped. ‘We on the committee called out clubs for using Government money to pay their non- playing staff, while at the same time paying top wages to star players. We called for the Premier League to put a stop to it, and for the Chancellor to impose a windfall tax if clubs refused.’ Yes, that’s exactly what business needs during a financial crisis: a windfall tax. And one that is imposed randomly, solely against one industry because there’s more easy publicity from it for that friend of the tax avoiders.
The honourable member, you may recall, wrote a book on how to escape inheritance tax, yet still feels empowered to lecture on financial propriety.
And no, taking furlough money is not a good look for football, particularly the wealthiest clubs. One imagines if Richard Scudamore had remained in charge of the Premier League a very firm directive would have been privately issued on the day the scheme was announced that none of the 20 elite teams should take advantage.
And that would have been the right move, certainly in terms of corporate image. Even so, there is no difference between a claim from a football club and a claim from the brother-in-law of the Emir of Qatar — who owns The Ritz — if it achieves the intention of protecting jobs.
It is therefore utterly disingenuous — and shows a fundamental
lack of understanding of the business of football, which would explain a lot — for Knight to make comparisons between expenditure on players and the positions of office staff.
Yes, Burnley could sell Ben Mee to ensure ticket-office personnel were paid. Yet with no trade in tickets for more than a year, what would be the point of that? It would weaken the squad and — as the only part of the football club still functioning is the team — threaten Burnley’s Premier League survival. And then, when the ticket office staff returned in readiness for next season, they could be selling tickets for the Championship. So there would be fewer of them. Meaning some staff would have to go.
For a former financial journalist, how does Knight not join these dots? how does he fail to appreciate that the employees of the club, and the playing staff, operate to entirely different imperatives under one roof? That one is active during lockdown, and the other is not?
That one has to be maintained, even at the expensive going rate, for the good of the other?
What would Knight’s cunning plan be for the survival of The ritz? hey, Sheik — if we sell all the beds, we can keep the maids.