Put Your Number on the Table
I’ll go to Villa Park when Israel play Palestine, if that day ever comes. I’ll wear a Union Jack T-shirt. I’ll have both flags in my jacket.
Let’s stop lying about what we’re really arguing over. We talk about flags on lampposts, or who should play football in Birmingham, but we all know what the fight is really about. It’s not lampposts or fixtures. It’s Israel and Palestine. It’s love and loathing wrapped in cloth. It’s where we stand when the news shows dead children and smoking ruins. That’s what’s going on here. Everything else is camouflage.
We can see it coming to Villa Park next month. Maccabi Tel Aviv are due to play Aston Villa. To the untrained eye it’s a football match. But in the stands, in the pubs, online, it will be another front in the same long argument about which lives count and whose flag is righteous. One set of people will say “keep politics out of sport”. Another set will arrive draped in politics. Both will pretend the other side started it. The truth is that everyone wants the theatre of innocence.
So let’s drop the act. Before you post, boo, wave, ban or condemn, tell us where you sit. Pick your number. There are two ugly scales and everyone belongs somewhere on them.
Scale A — Israel:
1 means Israel should be wiped off the map.
10 means Israel can kill whoever it likes.
Scale B — Palestine:
1 means Palestine shouldn’t exist as an idea.
10 means Palestine should be a permanent world power, a P5 nation, replacing whoever you fancy.
The extremes are poison. One end reeks of genocide, the other of impunity. Yet both ends pretend to be morality. They’re not. They’re madness in different uniforms. If you live near either end, expect to be called out. Nobody owes a podium to extermination or to unaccountable killing.
Most people don’t live there anyway. We live in the messy middle, grief, fear, half-knowledge and habit. That’s where real argument happens. But to argue honestly we have to know who’s speaking and from where. Flags and scarves are how we hide that knowledge.
When you hoist a flag in a town square, or stick one on a lamppost, you create permission. A flag changes the weather of a place. It tells people what it’s safe to say and what it’s safe to hate. A St George cross on one estate gives licence for sneering at a bloke fixing his car. A Palestinian flag in another gives cover for someone who crosses from protest into abuse. The flags don’t commit the crime, but they open the door. That’s why councils and clubs need to think before they start decorating the skyline. A flag isn’t just cloth, it’s a moral signal.
Sport, of course, is the neatest theatre for this signalling. You can posture in public and then claim innocence after the final whistle. A scarf makes you a fan. A chant makes you part of the atmosphere. You can shout politics under the shelter of fandom and say “I was only supporting my team” when the cameras catch it. That’s the flimflam we keep falling for.
The Villa and Maccabi tie is a perfect example. West Midlands Police banned travelling fans from the Maccabi end. Cue outrage. Within hours came statements from Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage, Keir Starmer and Ed Davey, all tripping over themselves to look moral and decisive. They hadn’t read the police file. They hadn’t checked the club’s record. They just wanted to be seen.
Meanwhile, in the West Midlands, our own leaders said nothing. Silence everywhere. Golden silence, but not out of wisdom, out of fear. They were waiting for the line from their leaders before daring to speak. And then, just as the noise began to die down, Maccabi quietly announced that even if Villa offered them an allocation, they would not use it. The travelling support was off the table by their own choice. All that moral theatre, all those statements, and in the end there was no one coming.
It’s the same reflex that drives councils to hoist a flag before checking what they are endorsing. It’s politics as performance, and performance has replaced judgement.
This is why I’m saying: put your number on the table. If you’re a 2 on A and an 8 on B, say it. If you’re a 9 on A and a 1 on B, own it. Then at least we know what argument we’re really having. Don’t hide behind words like “nuance” or “complexity” when what you mean is cowardice. Be honest enough to declare your sympathies before you start telling the rest of us what should or shouldn’t fly over our streets.
Institutions need to be just as open. If a club or a council decides to fly a flag, publish the reason. Say who authorised it, how long it will stay up, who is invited to speak, and what complaints process exists. Transparency kills most rows before they start. Secrecy feeds suspicion. When people think decisions are being made in the shadows, the loudmouths move in and everyone else retreats.
And here’s a word for the moral posers who treat every flag as a chance to sneer at someone else. If your first move is to mock the working-class man fixing his car, or to shame an old bloke outside the pub, check yourself. Class contempt hides easily behind political purity. You’re not fighting bigotry, you’re performing superiority. The people you sneer at will spot it instantly and they’ll be right to be angry.
None of this is sentimental. It’s practical. It would stop some of the stupid rows if people had to say plainly where they stood. It would make politics cleaner and institutions more accountable. It would expose who is arguing in good faith and who is simply performing.
Because honesty, not loyalty, is what we’re missing. People stay silent or vague because they think truth makes them vulnerable. They think it will show them as they really are. And they’re right, it does. But that’s the point. Once we stop pretending, we can start talking. Once we know what everyone’s number is, we can stop treating every flag as a Rorschach test for moral virtue.
So here’s mine. I’ll go to Villa Park when Israel play Palestine, if that day ever comes. I’ll wear a Union Jack T-shirt. I’ll have both flags in my jacket. I won’t cheer for eradication. I won’t cheer for unaccountable killing. Put me where you like on your grid, but I’ve said it out loud. My seat, my scarf, my flags, my view.
That’s the grit of it.