Football did come home – and the outlook for England’s young team is bright
Football came home all right. England just didn’t win the tournament.
It’s no disgrace.
Italy can claim to be the outstanding team of the Euro 2020, and are worthy winners.
The guard of honour they formed as England went to collect their silver medals was a nice touch, and in keeping with a tournament which delivered for the most part a feelgood factor the continent needed after the last 16 months.
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England and Italy fans celebrate and commiserate a Euros final to remember
Over the last four weeks, Gareth Southgate and his team have cemented their reconnection with the public.
At the start of his 37-second message to the nation on the morning of the final, he said “We hope that we’ve represented you in the right way.”
They have. It matters. And it helps now, as England (nation and team) struggles to deal with more penalty heartbreak.
It will mitigate the flak the manager will receive over his choices for the shootout.
It’s hard to criticise him for putting his faith in the same young men whose praises we have sung for the past month.
Bringing on substitutes near the end of extra time specifically to take penalties in the shootout is not unusual – but it is a calculated risk.
It misfired badly here as Marcus Rashford – still only 23 – and 21-year old Jadon Sancho both failed from the spot.
Rashford, who looked as “cold” as you might expect for a man who had sat on the bench for 119 minutes, hit the post.
A couple of inches to the right, and we might very well have had a different outcome. The 55 years of hurt might have ended right here. And Bukayo Saka would not have had quite the same pressure on his 19-year old shoulders.
Saka’s shot was saved, and Southgate rushed to give comfort as the Arsenal forward broke down in tears.
“It’s down to me,” the manager said. “I made the choices.”
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Italian joy and English pain
The FA expects to extend Southgate’s contract beyond the end of next year’s World Cup in Qatar, a competition for which England can now expect to be among the favourites.
Of England’s squad of 26 here, only Kyle Walker and Jordan Henderson are over 30, so every one of them will likely remain in contention, and the youngsters will be a season-and-a-half more battle-hardened.
The outlook is bright, and the country will be with the team to a greater extent than in the past, despite the racism aimed at some players on social media and swiftly condemned by the FA.
Equally important for the longer term, the production line of young talent will continue to deliver, because of the class of 2021.
“It’s important,” said Southgate before the final, “that parents can say to their kids: ‘We are quite happy for you to be a Raheem, a Marcus, a Kalvin Phillips or whoever they might be’, because they stand for the right things off the pitch as well as on it.”
In the end, that matters more than whether England finished first or second at the Euros, even if it doesn’t feel like that this morning to those kids up and down the land, or the slightly older kids who nearly delivered the trophy.
Football did come home.
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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