ALASTAIR Campbell has questioned how many people that racially abused English Football players would have supported the Prime Minister’s previous controversial comments.
Campbell, 64, questioned if those racially abusing members of the England team may have been in support of the Prime Minister’s controversial comments.
England players Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford have been the victims of racial abused online after England’s Euro 2020 defeat to Italy last night.
The Good Morning Britain host remarked upon Johnson’s previous controversies that have involved comments he has later had to apologise for.
Mr Johnson previously had to apologise for comments where he referred to black people as “piccaninnies”.
The Prime Minister has also said that Muslim women wearing burkas look “like letter boxes.”
Campbell posted to Twitter this morning writing: “I wonder how many of the people now racially abusing England’s black players thought ‘good old Boris’ when he said Muslim women looked like letterboxes and he riffed on pica-ninnies with watermelon smiles.
“Racism at the top breeds racism at the bottom – with fireworks.”
The post has now collected over 5,000 likes with more than 700 retweets and 100 comments from twitter users who were mixed in their responses.
@BibbSteve said: “I think that racism at the bottom was always there, especially in football supporters.
“But casual racism at the top definitely validates aggressive racism at the bottom. It’s time leadership owned this.”
@HumberoCov wrote: “Plenty, we live in a society that is divided, xenophobic and racist, unfortunately football acts as a lightning rod for the worst aspects of English culture.”
@kittykat_x commented: “And how many would have lauded them if they’d won? Pond life the lot of them.”
@annekin1 replied: “I don’t think people like this actually pay much attention to politicians.
“It’s how Johnson’s attitude is presented in the gutter press which would have had the effect of giving permission to publicly act on the casual racism these people have been privately expressing for years.”
@Pep7471 added: “Refusal to condemn booing of taking the knee might have something to do with it…”
@Moranus812 also said: “ I hope we can now stop conflating sport with politics. It’s time to decouple this narrative – get after Johnson, absolutely.
“But leave football fans out of it.”
The Football Association (FA) has since condemned the online abuse that the England players have faced, expressing that they are “appalled” by the racism.
Speaking today a spokesperson from the FA said: “The FA strongly condemns all forms of discrimination and is appalled by the online racism that has been aimed at some of our England players on social media.
“We could not be clearer that anyone behind such disgusting behaviour is not welcome in following the team. We will do all we can to support the players affected while urging the toughest punishments possible for anyone responsible.
“We will continue to do everything we can to stamp discrimination out of the game, but we implore government to act quickly and bring in the appropriate legislation so this abuse has real life consequences.
“Social media companies need to step up and take accountability and action to ban abusers from their platforms, gather evidence that can lead to prosecution and support making their platforms free from this type of abhorrent abuse.”
