BREAKING: This is what Tory MP Natalie Elphicke sent to a Conservative MP’s group chat last night following the game

When the England team were being booed for a gesture of anti-racist solidarity, these two refused to defend them.

They don’t have the credibility to condemn racism now after helping to legitimise it in the first place.

Disgusting racial abuse of England players , yobs storming into Wembley and Leicester Sq trashed … why would football want to come home to this anyway?

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): I mean, if you are holding people in solitary confinement in DC jails for non-violent crimes at some point they become political prisoners. I try not to use that phrase, you know you don't want to hype anything or sensationalize. But, at what point does it become a political prosecution?

But the wider irony is that the England team of 2021 is one that simply would not exist if Patel had been in charge of the Home Office a generation ago. After England’s historic 2-0 win over Germany at Wembley in the last-16 on 29 June, a viral social media post from the Migration Museum in London, accompanied by a poster campaign, sought to underline the impact of immigration on English football. It depicted England’s starting XI from the game, but with the names of all the players of foreign ancestry – with either a parent or grandparent born abroad – crossed out. Just three remained: the defenders Luke Shaw and John Stones, and the goalkeeper Jordan Pickford. All have had superb tournaments. Still, you suspect the three of them might have struggled to keep Germany at bay on their own.
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And yet at this juncture, with the country uniting around the success of Gareth Southgate’s side, with immigration returning to the political agenda, with the Windrush scandal still fresh in the mind, it feels right to expose the noxious double standard of populist demagogues like Patel as the shameless opportunism it is. On 6 July, the day before England’s semi-final against Denmark, the Home Secretary unveiled the Nationality and Borders Bill in parliament – the latest front in the government’s attempt to correlate migration with criminality, even as it embraces this immigrant England team with its polyvalent identity and abhorrence of racist dog-whistling.
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At a moment of surging ethno-nationalism, rampant nativism and widening cultural division, it feels more vital than ever to get across that message: to point out the incongruity of wrapping yourself in England team colours while spurning the values they represent.