Three lions on a shirt – Come on England!

“Three lions on a shirt / Jules Rimet still gleaming / Thirty years of hurt / Never stopped me dreaming.”

We’ve been playing Baddiel and Skinner’s hit all day at the Reaction offices. It’s so brilliant because it gets to the heart of post ’66 English football culture. It is a culture dominated by the legacy of the generation of ’66. ‘Three Lions’ draws a line from ’66 into the present day – Lineker is invoked alongside Bobby Moore. But I think that line is now broken and that is a remarkably positive thing. There is no way back to the past. The ’66 boys really were the last, best seam of talent. In the noughties, England arguably had the best team in the world on paper. We dared to dream.

But in 2018, this team is so different to the great teams of yore, so modest and unremarkable that there is no expectation, no more dreaming, no more drippy nostalgia for a single, glorious summer’s Wembley day.

Okay, back to the reality of the everyday and a story that is a further indictment of Theresa May’s appalling leadership style. Billy Caldwell, a 12-year-old boy was prescribed medical cannabis oil for epileptic seizures in his native Northern Ireland. Suddenly, they stopped – the treatment had been an extraordinary success. But when he asked for a repeat prescription, he was denied access to it by Home Office officials. His seizures began again. For a week, the Home Office did nothing while Billy’s case got widespread attention in the press. Nothing from our PM.

Imagine an alternative reality in which Tony Blair or David Cameron is still in power (bear with me on this), and think what the response would have been. Either would have made sure to meet Billy at Heathrow, cradle him in his arms, pose with the oil etc etc, and he would have made the story his own. On Friday, Sajid Javid at last showed a bit of leadership and stepped in and granted a special licence to Billy’s medical team. Billy’s condition has stabilized and improved since. Javid tried to raise the issue at cabinet today. May did not want to discuss it.

You’d think this was an easy win for the government: there is massive public support for the legalization of medical cannabis (in contrast to the legalization of ‘harder’ drugs), and it’s a wonderful human story that has captured the attention of the mainstream press. The NHS dividend policy on Brexit was an attempt to wrest the narrative back in the government’s favour away from confusion and incompetence, but we need more feel-good stories at the moment.

There are many reasons for May to go, big arguments about her lack of philosophy and more strategic concerns about her lack of electoral appeal. But this sort of story will sink her in the long run, much as her completely tin-eared response to Grenfell and Windrush have massively damaged her standing with the public. A boy was very sick and there were things the British government could do to make him better and she was unable to see that nothing could be more important.