Dave is delighted: his noble cause of turning Britain into a gau of Germany has been endorsed by David ‘Golden Balls’ Beckham, who used to bend it like, well, Beckham.
I remember Ali G interviewing Becks and his wife Posh (the nickname shouldn’t be understood literally: it only reflects the contrast between Victoria and the other four sla…, I mean members, of Spice Girls). The couple’s son Brooklyn was then little, and Ali steered the conversation towards him.
“And how’s your little boy?” he asked Posh (having first enquired politely if there was any truth to the then popular football chant “Posh takes it up the a***.”) “Has he learned to speak in complete sentences yet?” “Yes,” said Posh. “And what about Brooklyn?” smirked the indomitable Ali G.
That joke was based on the common knowledge that Beckham, whom even his doting wife once described as a ‘tattooed yob’, is considered moronic even by the undemanding standards of professional football.
That Cameron welcomes support from such quarters shows he’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel. “You can’t win in Europe unless you’re on the pitch,” said the moron, and Beckham said something along those lines too.
The little boy may not have learned to talk in complete sentences of his own, but at least he has learned to read those written by others. It was clear that neither he nor his advisers were sharp enough to conceal the fact that Becks was being a dummy to someone else’s ventriloquist.
On the contrary, they positively advertised it by making Golden Balls utter words that are patently not in his vocabulary. He talked, for example, of us living “in a vibrant and connected world”, whose problems we “for our children and their children should be facing together and not separately.” Vibrant and connected? Really, David. Stick to “I hit it first time, and there it was in the back of the net.”
Who are ‘we’? And together with whom exactly? Doesn’t the EU discourage togetherness with the vibrant and connected world outside the 28 members, soon to be augmented by Turkey? And is it really necessary to dissolve our ancient sovereignty to face the vibrating challenges of our connected world, or is it connected challenges of our vibrating world?
I’m sure that, before taking the microphone, Becks had thought such issues through with his customary depth. And in any case he was speaking from personal experience: “I was also privileged to play and live in Madrid, Milan and Paris with teammates from all around Europe and the world.”
The implication is that, until the 1992 Maastricht Treaty came down to us from the burning bush, British footballers could go abroad no farther than the Isle of Man. I don’t know if David’s newly enriched lexicon includes the word ‘history’ but, if it does, he could refer to it for the names of British footballers who played on the continent way before 1992. Mark Hughes, Paul Lambert, Glenn Hoddle, Gary Lineker, Kevin Keegan, Jimmy Greaves, Dennis Law, Ian Rush, John Charles et al spring to mind.
As a loyal wife should, Posh backed her ‘tattooed yob’ all the way. “I believe in a future for my children where we are stronger together and I support the Remain campaign,” said the rare example of a woman happy with a husband who’s conspicuously dafter than she is.
Her words caused an uncomfortable pause because many people remembered that a few years ago she had said that the EU was “destroying [the UK’s] national identity and individuality.” When this was mentioned, Posh immediately accused the Leave campaign of “trying to put a spin on quotes”.
Those xenophobe Little Englanders were too narrow-minded to grasp the true meaning of Posh’s unequivocal words all those years ago. What she meant, and only a bigot would fail to get it, was that the EU was giving us what we had sorely missed for all those centuries: our national identity and individuality.
Beckham’s namesake Cameron sounded as if he had just scored a hat trick for England. “There was a very moving statement today from David Beckham talking about his children,” he said. Of course in our world, where sentimentality is confused with sentiment, any mention of children has to be moving, one must acknowledge that.
But would Dave be equally moved by the suggestion that our children would be better off growing up in a sovereign country with the world’s best political tradition, rather than in a province of the EU, which is another word for Germany? Or if someone reminded him of the thousands of English children killed during Germany’s previous attempt to unite Europe?
The rich amalgam of cynicism, stupidity and amorality permeate this whole episode. And I’m talking not about poor Becks, who doesn’t know better, but about Cameron, who should – in fact, about the entire Remain campaign that hasn’t produced a single argument going beyond platitudes or lies.
I pray this lot don’t win tomorrow. I fear they might.
P.S. It’s commonly known that football writers are only marginally higher than football players on the intellectual food chain. Henry Winter of The Times proved that by explaining his reasons for voting Remain: “The debate seems to focus on the politics and economics of Europe rather than the people,” meaning that he had met a lot of nice people of Europe. Just to think that the future of our country is being decided by cretins like that.