The first world cup I can remember was Mexico ’86 and I was mad about it. I still remember the dramas – Bryan Robson‘s injury, Ray Wilkins getting sent off against Morocco and the glory of a Gary Lineker hat-trick against the Poles to get out of the group stages. Then onto the great game against Paraguay and finally the infamous Argentina game where Diego Maradona – just as bonkers then as now but no less brilliant for it – decided the result with the best and worst goals in history.

It’s scary to contemplate how different the game I adored as a youngster is from the game we are currently watching in South Africa. In 1986, you could hear a dull thud every time the ball was hit hard (see video below) – now the ball is so light that it hardly makes a noise. Before the flooding of the Premier League with overseas players, there was a considerably larger pool of talent for the England manager Bobby Robson to pick from. They also knew how to play as a team and England caps – not the silly money of the Premier League – was their number one motivation.

During the years between Italia ’90 and France ’98, the English game changed dramatically. It ceased to become a sport and became instead a form of entertainment that was commoditised by BSkyB and sponsors to reinforce their brands. Footballers were no longer sportsmen, they became entertainers and even famous celebrities and were paid accordingly. England wasn’t the first nation to do this – Italy had been paying big wages in Serie A – but it was the first to do so in such a comprehensive way.

In all the excitement, no-one stopped to think how so wealthy and powerful a league independent from the Football Association could possibly benefit to the England football team. Or perhaps they did and ploughed on regardless. But rather than opening up the football market, the Premier League created several super-teams, three of whom have shared all but one of the titles since the formation in 1992. Rather than creating better English players, it was more commercially viable to buy them in. And rather than seek to teach English managers how to galvanise and control the newly-inflated egos of football, the new money meant that they could simply be hired in, ready-made from the continent.

The movement that was supposed to set English football free had no time for development, training or nurture. It just wanted success – at whatever price was deemed reasonable.

Every world cup, one looks at the players in the English side and concludes that they must be one of the top five or six sides in the world. But in each of the last competitions we have lacked the ability to beat Brazil (2002), Portugal (2006), Argentina (1998) and Germany (1996), Portugal (2000), France and Portugal (2004). In that time we beat the Netherlands (1996), Argentina (2002) and Germany (2000) – but only during the group, not knock-out, stages. We can’t lift our performances for the big occasion. And that’s about attitude and teamwork.

You can argue that in 1986 and 1990 things were no different but I disagree. England were hugely unlucky in both tournaments not to reach the final and in 1990 I think they could and should have won. Looking at highlights of these games now, it is difficult to imagine today’s team playing with the same fluency, awareness, communication and selflessness. They may have got fitter but that’s about all.

And until our domestic league structure changes and England comes first, we will never win another competition as we’ll always come up short when the pressure is on. That success has been mortgaged and sold off by the Premier League to pay for its footballing theatre.

As Basil Fawlty said: "Cuddle one of these and you'll never play the guitar again"

I don’t subscribe to the view that while British soldiers were dying in Afghanistan, it was wrong to run a story about two young girls being mauled by a fox in their own home. Two little girls have been nastily injured and that would have been a story whatever else was going on.

But neither do I agree that this case furthers the argument to repeal the hunting ban. We have plenty of foxes around here and as soon as they see you, they scarper. None would dream of coming into the house and if they did – ban or no ban – they’d be lucky to make it out again. But truly urban foxes – those that live in London boroughs and inner city areas – are much more used to human presence and have learned that we are rarely a threat (at least intentionally) and they can outpace us in unenclosed spaces.

Foxes are highly evolved predators, which makes them efficient hunters but also rather unpleasant killers of domestic pets. There is a reason, after all, that hunting was initiated in the first instance ie to protect livestock. That reason still holds but the Hunting Act has been in force for five years now and livestock numbers have not dramatically fallen and foxes are still controlled in the countryside – often, it has to be said, by huntsmen.

The difference in behaviours between the urban and country fox means that trying to use an urban context to justify a country pursuit is just nonsense. I maintain that illiberal though the Hunting Act may have been, the country has moved on and there are more pressing things to attend to. As you can see in the Daily Mail comments, the nation is totally polarised on this issue – the anti-hunt lobby are prepared to libel the mother in the story by insinuating that foxes weren’t responsible for the attack and the pro-hunt viewpoint is that we should be able to kill these animals as necessary.

My heart instinctively wants hunting back – it was a spiteful, class-fuelled sop that has done little for animal welfare. I respect the traditions of the countryside and believe in supporting the people who live there. But my head says no – there is simply no justification for the coalition to split itself and everyone else into opposing camps for an issue that in overall terms matters little other than to quench the thirst for revenge.

There are better battles to fight – Conservatives should let this one go.

This story particularly caught my eye today both in the papers this morning and then Radio 5 Live earlier this evening. There is a move by the Queen’s English Society to form an Academy of English to protect and adjudicate on the proper use of English worldwide.

It’s interesting on a number of levels. A lot of people will say “who knows what the correct version of English is?” and the answer to that one is simple – anyone who understands the rules of grammar and cares enough to stick to them. The next question is “So which version of English are we talking about?” and the answer to that again is simple – the original, English one.

Then we move onto “How do you expect to get people to speak English according to the rules?” and the answer to that is that there is no expectation to be able to do this – the academy is simply there to preserve the heritage and providence of the language. In France and Spain, similar academies exist.

The final objection is usually one of snobbery – the idea that correct use of English is somehow a statement of class and superiority. I don’t accept that  our great language should become a pawn  through which people express their desired status. It may be that there are differences in English proficiency between socio-economic groups but the academy wouldn’t seek to highlight those and nor should it. Neither must it be held hostage by any perceived taboo within them.

It is important that we understand the unique place our language has served in the world in modern historical times. Those who enjoy it in a purer form than one typically encounters in everyday life should have an establishment that ensures future generations can do so too.

Catching flies - Miliband won't be the threat Tories fear

Labour held its leadership hustings today in Southport and according to the BBC, which seems to be intent on pretending that Labour is still in power, this internal Labour Party process was an event that merited live TV coverage. In fact, the reason that the hustings were held at all seemed to me to be all about David Miliband in particular getting some welcome exposure.

Yesterday, the BBC news lead with the bare-faced revelation that Miliband was accusing the PM of “hypocrisy” on spending cuts and “broken promises”. The sheer brass neck needed to occasion such a piece of naked and mendacious opportunism is difficult to quantify with words alone – suffice it to say that the corporation seems to have decided that Miliband is the next Labour leader and they are determined to make him PM in 2015. Personally, I can’t see the British people going for it but there we go.

Today however and in front of the GMB, comrade Miliband was talking about “our people” and building Labour up “workplace by workplace“. And he’s supposed to be the Blairite – can we assume that the likes of Ed Balls, brother Ed and Diane Abbott would wish to be seen as even more substantially left? No doubt the coalition has pulled the Conservative Party to the left and the Liberal Democrats to the right to end up somewhere in the genuine centre rather than the centre-right with which many Conservatives would be more comfortable.

Is the only place for Labour to go back to the left? From 1994 onwards, Labour had a go at being capitalists but forgot that supporting and spending the proceeds of economic growth also entails a measure of responsibility and after 15 years of profligacy the money has run out. They can’t go to the right, they no longer look credible in the centre ground and so with Miliband heading back to the comrades for support, they can only move to that left ground vacated by NC. Fine by me.

Until today, I think most Conservatives were hoping that Ed Balls might get the leadership in an attempt to saddle Labour with a leader even more unelectable than Gordon Brown. However John McConnell seems to be intent on taking on that mantle after some very ill-judged comments about Lady Thatcher. I admire her in many ways; but not in others as I’ve said before. But the idea of assassinating political leaders is either puerile posturing or dangerous nonsense from a man who wants to become Prime Minister (presumably). Leaving aside the poor taste, if the best answer Labour has got to Britain’s problems is time travel back to the 80s and taking out the then PM – who for a greater part was simply sorting out the last mess Labour left – then their ideas barrel clearly has sprung a leak.

If Labour is sensible it will elect David Miliband as leader – but I’m not sure Conservatives should be too worried by that prospect.

A milestone - but the conflict rages on

I was first taught about the Arab-Israeli conflict in fourth form history and I must admit as a 14-year-old I found the situation fascinating as a subject of study. Unfortunately the reality is less grounded in paper and more in blood – the recent conflict between Israeli commandos and peace protesters at sea may have hit the headlines but this clash of cultures take the lives of Israeli and Palestinian civilians alike on a daily basis.

I’m not interested in pitching up on any one side – I used to be a supporter of Israel but I think being a supporter of either side is increasingly untenable; a solution will never be found by force of support but by an abandonment of tribalism and a calm, reasoned settlement.

Whether that is – or will ever be – possible with the extreme elements contained within either side, is another matter. But what is certain is that there are no winners – from the people who thought it was a good idea to get on ships and deliberately provoke one of the most alert security forces in the world by trying to break a blockade, to the commanders who sent in crack troops to perform a riot control operation against conventions in international waters.

Who has benefitted from this episode? Not the dead and injured, not the people of Gaza who need aid and not the Israeli state, which is being forced onto every conceivable media outlet to justify its actions.

To me there is an equivalence between a state surrounded on all sides by neighbours who want it annihilated and a displaced people who live in abject conditions and without many rights, some of whom resort to violence to improve their lot. To enter the court of interational opinion and try to argue a settlement on the basis of who is the most “right” and “wronged”, who are the “victims” and the “aggressors” is a totally pointless exercise.

This is what “peace protesters” and “Israeli supporters” alike don’t get. The very maintenance of their positions is a blockage to peace. The only way to achieve a better life for everyone is to let go of the very circumstances that bind them together and give them identity. And that, regrettably, is why I feel a solution to the conflict is no closer than when I was at school – and will remain far off for another generation to come.

Within a year of The Sun backing Blair in 1997, the uncomfortable re-alignment of the newspaper was broken by one of the most unedifying headlines of recent times upon the revelation that Peter Mandelson and then Nick Brown were both gay.

As a rather more right-wing than I am now Conservative student, I didn’t give the question “Tell Us Tony: Are We Being Run By A Gay Mafia?” as much consideration as I no doubt should have done but in the furore that followed, the newspaper pledged to bring its attitudes to homosexually into somewhere approaching the 20th century.

Now older, and questionably slightly wiser but certainly more liberal with a small “L”, I note with sadness that people rarely change and newspapers never do. Today, as One Nation Tory notes, the paper is asking its readers the question “Should gay people be cabinet ministers?“ Really.

All of which goes to show that in 12 years the Sun has gone nowhere on this, that Labour’s strategy of legislating to rid ourselves of bigotry is a total sophistry and that it is personal experiences that change values and attitudes. The experience of reading the Sun today is hardly likely to be helpful.

Woking Magistrates Court - photo: Surrey Advertiser

A couple of weeks ago, the Surrey Ad also ran a story about rumours surrounding the possible closure of Woking Courthouse, which incorporates the magistrates court, as well as family and youth courts. It would appear that this is an option being considered and many people at the courthouse are determined to fight any such proposal.

The reasons for keeping Woking Courthouse open are manifold and, I believe, self-evident. We have in this country a superb principle of justice delivered for the community by the community. A person accused of a crime can expect to have a fair and uniform hearing locally in public and by their peers – removing the Woking function and placing it all with Guildford means that people from as afar as Camberley, Addlestone and Weybridge as well as Woking will have justice administered in a different part of Surrey. I feel this is entirely inappropriate.

More so given Woking’s unique ethnic and cultural diversity. The courts service in Woking has a very good relationship with Woking Mosque and other organisations dealing with mental health and social issues in North West Surrey. Moving the court operation to Guildford interrupts many of these good relationships and makes achieving the court’s objectives with large sections of society in this part of Surrey more difficult.

Woking is Surrey’s largest town with an urban population exceeding both Guildford and Reigate. It is unthinakable that we should be without the facilities to cater for the needs of that population and those include the apparatus needed to dispense justice fairly, quickly and locally. Woking’s proximity to Guildford should not be an excuse to ignore these demographics – Guildford is quite busy enough as it is.

Finally, there has to be a question about what happens to Woking Police Station if the courthouse closes. The station is linked to the courthouse via an underground passageway and both the station and courthouse have a suite of custody cells. There is a similar arrangement in Staines, Guildford and Redhill and between this quartet, 95% of people accused of crimes are dealt with in these courts. If Woking courthouse went, there would be little sense in keeping the police station in its present form if it were denied the above role – and that too is a serious worry.

As for the magistrates, I can only speak for myself but I applied to serve my community in my community and while I agreed to sit anywhere the courts service requested, my clear preference was always Woking. For that option not even to exist for applicants in the future would indeed be a very retrograde step.

An interesting story in a few of the papers today is the case of the magistrate in Blackburn who faces disciplinary action after using the term “absolute scum” to describe young defendants in court.

The Daily Mail story (almost verbatim) is interesting because it offers us an insight into some public opinion in the comments underneath, almost all of whom agree with the magistrate and say that his comments were justified and correct. This raises an interesting question about magistrates – whose justice do magistrates dispense?

Justice, of course, is the crown’s and the Queen’s and last Monday I swore two oaths – both included phrases to serve and pledge alliegance to the Queen and her successors. But if magistrates are taken from the local population, shouldn’t they be free to express the views of the society they serve? Well, yes and no. Magistrates are free to express the court’s views on a crime or sentence to defendants within certain perameters if they are serving as a bench chairman.

But the Judicial Oath also contains in it the words:

“I will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of the Realm without fear or favour, affection or ill will”

To me, although the bit about the Queen is important, it is this forward-facing part of the oaths that is most relevant on a day-to-day basis. The magistrate on this occasion may feel he was speaking for the community and that by phrasing it the way he did and attributing the “absolute scum” to what “normal people”, rather than he or the court might think he was ameliorating the bane.

But what he has actually done is created the perception – however misplaced – of ”ill will” towards the defendants and reinforced those feelings within the community. That, it my view, goes against the Judicial Oath. The fact that the comments were made in a Youth Court – where particularly sensitive and careful work with young people goes on – is also unfortunate.

The gentleman concerned is an experienced magistrate and has  given considerable service to his community. And the culture of the magistracy generally is one of ongoing training, improvement and support for everyone involved – we all make mistakes and discussion, correction and learning is the positive approach to addressing them.

But, sorry to disappoint the Daily Mail, we can’t have justices appointing themselves as “voices of the community” or stamping their own moral code on the courtroom, however awful the offence and unrepetent the defendant.

Using their reasonable judgement to dispense justice according to the law is the sole purpose of a justice; anything else is politics and that, as we know, belongs in a different place.

So now Gordon and his merry men are out of Downing Street and DC has become PM, what is there left to write about? It wouldn’t be so bad if I could switch attention onto the Lib Dems but they are now our partners so I can’t write anything about them either (plus they are all such nice people, of course).

Thankfully, Woking Borough Council fires up in six days with the first Muslim mayor of Woking, Cllr Mohammed Iqbal, being sworn in. I’ve known Cllr Iqbal for a number of years and he cares about his community. He has worked very hard to bring about positive changes in Maybury and Sheerwater and is a very approachable man with a great sense of humour and humility.

He will make a superb mayor – and it is about time that the Muslim community in our town should be represented among the roll of those who’ve served this town as council Chairman and later Mayor. I’m particularly proud that they should come from the ranks of the Conservative Party, though I know the other parties will share our enthusiasm for this development.

In addition, we wait to see what form the council will take this year. Although the election results produced no net change with 18 Con, 17 LD and one independent, our tenancy of the mayoralty this year means that the numbers are effectively 17-all with Peter Ankers having the casting vote if parties follow the whip. I have my doubts as to how healthy this situation is but perhaps more on this another time.

While I would obviously have preferred to have been sitting in the chamber around the benches on May 20, I was sworn in as a magistrate on Monday afternoon by the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey Sarah Goad, High Sheriff Robert Douglas and Mr Justice Critchlow at Guildford Crown Court in a short but memorable ceremony. I was particularly delighted that my parents were able to be there and I could see Mum welling up as I read the oath!

In all honesty, I have several months of quite intensive training and sitting ahead of me and it would have been ambitious to have combined it with the duties of a councillor. My father thought I was completely mad to have even considered it – perhaps he was right and some things happen for a reason.

That said, I have got a meeting of the Horsell and Woodham Conservatives this evening where I have to explain away our failure to win (joke, they are all extremely supportive) and we have got plenty to do in Horsell to make sure that people’s lives are improved and that they are represented well in council. As I said a week ago, councillor or not, the community is always there to be served.

The Medicine Cabinet

As the PM named his cabinet today, there are one or two surprises but also a good deal of talent that I hope will mean that this cabinet is able to heal and address the multitude of problems that we face.

The Foreign Office has been preparing for William Hague’s arrival for five years and I’m very pleased that this pleasant, intelligent, articulate and skilful man with such a mastery of politics has finally achieved an office that will do him justice. His last government post was as Welsh Secretary and since leaving the leadership in 2001, he has become one of the most significant and gentle voices in Conservatism. Immensely popular with the grass roots, he has got a significant challenge to extracate us from Afghanistan and head off Iran.

I’m delighted too that Michael Gove is Education Secretary and will get the opportunity to enact his reforms to improve standards and give more autonomy to teachers. He is a generous and thoughtful man who understands the value of education and its ability to transform lives. Iain Duncan Smith makes a very welcome return to the front line after working on policy at his Centre for Social Justice. His work on how to build a better society and his personal convictions on this subject will be an invaluable contribution.

We all thought that Ken Clarke was a successful chancellor but actually he has been a QC since 1980 and the post of Justice Secretary will allow him to take a step back from the economy for the time being. The appointments of Jeremy Hunt - who visited Woking two weeks ago and is a really nice guy as well as a great MP - and Sayeeda Warsi, who helped give Nick Griffin such a pasting on Question Time, are also reasons to be happy. I hope both will be successful and grow into even more prestigious offices in the future – but for the Lib Dem presence, undoubtedly both would have featured more prominently.

The Lib Dem presence is a positive thing. It is always difficult for the Conservatives to be representative of Scotland given we only have one MP there and Danny Alexander is rightly given the brief of Scottish Secretary. He is a skilled communicator and problem-solver who is well-placed to deal with the SNP on equal terms. David Laws, on the right of the Lib Dems, is someone who shares an economic realism that he will need as Chief Secretary - Vince Cable did well to side-step that role, which will be high-profile during the spending reviews ahead.

Chris Huhne is a principled and cerebral man who I met several years ago when he was an MEP. He will be able to argue strongly for a more sustainable future – whether he’ll be comfortable when it comes to energy policy remains to be seen. Vince Cable’s popularity will be tested as Business Secretary but his abilities are not in doubt and he has a wealth of business experience to draw on. 

I’m not happy about everything – George Osborne is still a barrier to support for many people and I believe should have been dropped as chancellor in favour of Philip Hammond. I’m not sure why Theresa May is Home Secretary and would have preferred the responsbility for women and equality to have fallen separately – perhaps to Baroness Warsi. I was never sure why Liam Fox was moved from health or why Andrew Lansley was moved into it and Caroline Spelman seems a strange choice for the environment. I regret the passing over of Nick Herbert and excellent housing spokesman Grant Shapps.

But what we have now is much better than the fag-ends of the Labour government and the pernicious influence of Mandelson and Campbell has been expunged from power. Now the work of the cabinet, which I believe is united behind its reform programme, must begin.

Update 13/5: Rightly, both Nick Herbert and Grants Shapps are now ministers according to The Times:

2.45pm The keys to the safe

Damian Green – once notoriously arrested (but not charged) on suspicion of receiving leaks from the home office – is confirmed as immigration minister. No longer any need for leaks then: he’ll be working in the home office.

And Nick Herbert will also be at the home office as the minister with responsibility for police.

Two facts about him: his middle name is Le Quesne. And he’s one of the few openly gay senior Tories.