This article is taken from the April 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
In 2021, following the outcry over the proposed creation of a European Super League, Tracey Crouch MP was asked to chair an “Independent Fan-Led Review of Football Governance”. In spite of being an ex-Tory minister, Crouch concluded that what the English football pyramid really needed was to be regulated. Or, rather, more regulated, since it’s already up to its neck in red tape.
This led to the introduction of the Football Governance Bill in March 2024 with the object of creating an “Independent Football Regulator”, but it fell by the wayside when Rishi Sunak called a snap election two months later.
Unfortunately, it’s been rescued by Labour and, given the size of the government’s majority, could receive Royal Assent as soon as this summer. In anticipation, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has set up a shadow regulator which already employs the equivalent of 38 full-time members of staff, 37 of whom are DCMS officials.
So, how do I hate this bill? Let me count the ways. First, the new regulator is being sold as something that’s going to benefit fans. In the Government press release that accompanied the bill’s resurrection, we were told it would “support” and “empower” fans and put them back “at the heart of the game”. Tell that to Linzi Smith, a lifelong Newcastle United fan.
In 2023, Linzi received a three-season ban from her beloved club, meaning she’s not allowed to attend games home or away until 2026, because she doesn’t think someone born with a penis can become a woman. She didn’t say this to a trans member of staff at the club, or even a trans fan — she said it on X. But someone decided that just expressing this belief on social media was a breach of Newcastle’s equality policy, complained to the club, and the club upheld the complaint and duly sanctioned her.
Why is this relevant? Because one of the new regulator’s duties, according to the bill, will be to make sure the 92 clubs in the football pyramid are doing even more to promote equity, diversity and inclusion. That is to say, the supporters of this bill don’t think the Premier League is doing nearly enough to enforce woke dogma.
Yes, Newcastle has banned one solitary fan for expressing her “discriminatory” views but what about the 52,000 other supporters who regularly attend games at St James’s Park? Shouldn’t Newcastle be combing through their social media posts to see if they share the same heretical opinions and start punishing them, too? Absolutely, say the supporters of this bill. They want to “support” and “empower” fans like Linzi and put them back “at the heart of the game” by banning them from stadiums.
Second, in what universe does a success story like the Premier League require more regulation? As Lord Moynihan pointed out at the bill’s second reading in the upper house, the Premiership is the jewel in the crown of the British economy. It is one of our most successful industries, paying £4 billion a year in tax and giving a further £1.6 billion to the leagues beneath it and the grass roots. It employs 90,000 people. It’s also one of the few remaining drivers of the UK’s soft power, with three billion viewers in 900 million homes in 189 countries.
Even the Championship, the second tier in the English football pyramid, is the fifth most watched league in Europe.
It is to the eternal shame of the last Conservative government that it took one look at virtually the only thing in this country that still works and decided it needed to be more heavily regulated. The only explanation I can think of is that Rishi Sunak is a cricket fan — and I note he didn’t say anything about creating a cricket regulator.
But what excuse does a government led by a lifelong Arsenal supporter have? Sir Keir Starmer claims to be “pro-growth”, but he hasn’t grasped that over-regulation is inimical to economic growth. If he understood that, he wouldn’t be creating new quangos at the rate of one a week.
Third, the new regulator is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Boris Johnson was panicked into commissioning Tracey Crouch to chair the review because of the public furore about the European Super League, which would have seen England’s six most successful clubs leaving the Premiership and playing a version of Champions League football all season. But that proposal lasted about five minutes before it was pooh-pooed by every major football club. There was no need for an “independent” regulator to shut it down.
The other “problem” this quango is designed to solve is that football clubs occasionally go bust — with Exhibit A being Bury FC, which was expelled from the English Football League in 2019 after it became insolvent. It went into receivership in 2020, but in 2022 it was bought by a consortium of fans and is now a viable club once more, albeit one that’s had to start again at the bottom of the pyramid. The same fate has befallen other football clubs that have gone out of business — Chester City, Halifax Town, Macclesfield Town, Maidstone United, Scarborough, Hereford United. Every one of them has been resurrected.
For God’s sake, Sir Keir, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There are so many things in this country that don’t work properly, why not busy yourself with them? Football isn’t one of them.
