Small wonder the Premier League were playing ‘wait and see’ over their offer to the EFL when a free-marketeer is the new prime minister.
The pushback has been quiet, almost silent, but the power of lobbying has been on full display this week with the utterly unsurprising news that the new government formed by Liz Truss, a woman whose opinions are heartfelt for so long as she can profit from them, is now wavering over the introduction of an independent regulator for football.
What else would you expect from someone who continues to believe that the discredited notion of ‘trickledown economics’ has value to anybody bar the very wealthiest? And who believes that tax cuts for the wealthiest is in any way an appropriate response to a cost of living crisis that seems likely to engulf millions of people this winter?
Of course, there has always been a feeling that this was likely to come undone at some point. It is not instinctive to a Conservative government to wish to regulate anything that might curb the richest taking control of everything. But whereas Boris Johnson was an unabashed populist, Truss has already made it pretty clear where her priorities lie.
She had little intention of doing anything about spiralling fuel bills until it became clear that the optics of doing so were going to be calamitous for her, and she’s already spoken publicly about making “unpopular decisions”, as though emphasising this to the exclusion of any other considerations is some sort of badge of honour rather than ordinarily a character trait to be found in a borderline sociopath.
None of this should come as any surprise.
The report in The Times confirming all of this stops a little shy of confirming it is set to be kicked into the long grass and forgotten about. It’s full of what we can only presume they believe will be ameliorating turns of phrase, such as, ‘the government would prefer to avoid legislation if possible’, and ‘Government insiders insist, however, that legislation remains part of its armoury if football fails to come to an acceptable agreement involving the FA, Premier League and EFL’.
Is there really an agreement that can be reached between the Premier League and the rest that will actually change the way in which football is governed without external influence? It doesn’t seem likely that anything will materialise that will move the status quo in any way. The Premier League has been getting what it wants, when it wants for the…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Football365…