Member

For all this talk of tackling discrimination and creating more diverse workplaces, in this case in football clubs, we never tackle the lack of diversity of opinions. That question is never raised. We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Reay, that if you are a female football fan who expresses a gender-critical view then you might end up getting disciplined by your football club. You have to query all the time what these words mean and what exactly is happening here. Too often when football has entered into the political arena—which is why I do not want it to—it adopts a homogenous worldview such as that which took hold at the height of the embrace of Black Lives Matter in the middle of 2020, when fans who were less than keen on the “taking the knee” gesture that some players endorsed or were sceptical of BLM’s anti-white “defund the police” policies were then denounced as racist.