Politics

How to grab onto an England victory

Published

2 months ago

July 5, 2026

LONDON — England is on the cusp of joining the World Cup’s final eight, and hope is tentatively starting to spread that this month could finally end 60 years of hurt for a nation that has come home emptyhanded from every tournament since.

This week’s Westminster Insider podcast explores the strange but powerful relationship between soccer and politics — and the unwritten rules politicians should follow if they want to use the unique emotional power of the beautiful game to their advantage.

1. Get your timing right

It looks highly likely that Andy Burnham will become Britain’s new prime minister on July 20 — just one day after the World Cup final. If England were to lift the trophy, Burnham’s first day in office would coincide with a wave of national euphoria. History suggests this could be somewhat helpful to a new prime minister.

Ten days before England’s 1966 World Cup triumph, Prime Minister Harold Wilson introduced an emergency package of tax rises and spending cuts as Britain grappled with inflation and economic pressure. Morale was low.

Then came Geoff Hurst’s hat-trick and England’s glorious win over West Germany. England’s victory at Wembley gave the country a huge psychological lift — and boosted the standing of the government. Richard Crossman, then leader of the House of Commons, said in his diaries there was “a big change in Harold’s personal position.”

But if Burnham is hoping for a well-timed World Cup-inspired polling boost on arrival, he should be aware that there are obvious risks if England doesn’t go all the way.

In 1970, Wilson had hoped another deep England run would help create a feel-good factor before a general election. Instead, England surrendered a two-goal lead to West Germany in the quarter-finals just four days before polling day.

Home Secretary Roy Jenkins reported after canvassing that voters were despondent — less about the economy or immigration than who was to blame for England’s defeat. Wilson lost to Ted Heath’s Conservatives.

The electoral impact of the 1970 World Cup disappointment is still the subject of debate, though an intriguing fact has only added to the folklore: English voters swung more towards the Conservatives than Scotland and Wales.

2. It’s more than a game

Playwright James Graham, creator of the hit play and BBC TV series “Dear England,” argues politicians often underestimate soccer’s deeper social importance.

Amid the “hollowing out” of British civic life — declining high streets, weakened public spaces and fractured communities — the soccer stadium is one of the few places left where people still gather physically and collectively, he says. So it matters not just every two or four years during major tournaments, but every single week, shaping people’s routines, their communities and even their identities.

When people support their club, they are investing in something bigger than themselves: shared rituals, symbols, songs and belonging. “You have to turn up in person and in proximity with your physical community,” he says.

Graham argues that politicians who understand this are more likely to connect to voters in what he sees as an age of growing disconnection, as people’s lives are increasingly shaped by AI, growth targets and digital life.

“It’s a powerful opportunity to show the kind of country we are,” says Labour MP Kim Leadbeater. “The very best of people coming together.”

3. Be authentic

No discussion of the potential peril of mixing football and politics is complete without mentioning David Cameron.

The former prime minister — supposedly an Aston Villa supporter — famously claimed to support West Ham during the 2015 election campaign.

He later blamed a “brain fade” — but the damage was done.

Scarlett McGwire, political commentator and former Labour adviser, says authenticity is everything.

“One of the reasons it’s so important for politicians to be authentic is there’s this myth that politicians always lie,” she says. “If they’re not authentic, people think: if they’re lying about this, they could be lying about everything.”

Soccer fans can smell performative fandom instantly. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage recently faced criticism after posting what appeared to be recycled football content from Euro 2024 during this World Cup.

Writer and journalist Adrian Goldberg says when politicians are genuine fans “football can just be a little bridge between the electorate and the prime minister.”

Although this didn’t seem to help genuine Arsenal supporter Keir Starmer.

4. Remember the home nations

Navigating loyalties across the United Kingdom — which fields four separate national teams — is hard.

McGwire recalls former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s advisers deciding he was “too Scottish” and working to place a Daily Mail story about how he cheered on the English team.

“It was completely set up,” she says. “Nobody believed it.”

Scottish Labour backbench MP Brian Leishman — a long-suffering supporter of the Tartan Army — is less concerned about courting England fans.

“It would be intolerable if England won the World Cup,” he says. “I would hate it.”

That result could boost support for Scottish independence, he adds — only half-jokingly.

5. There is no single football audience

Soccer teams are cheered on by a wide range of people — from younger fans to older traditionalists, England obsessives to club loyalists, politically engaged supporters to those who simply want politics kept out of the game.

It has grown more difficult for politicians to balance them without stumbling into divisive culture-war debates. Goldberg argues the controversy over players “taking the knee” during the Black Lives Matter protests in the early 2020s left fans on the terraces divided.

“There were some fan bases where taking of the knee was booed, there were others where it was embraced and others where fans were kind of somewhere in the middle around that,” he says.

That makes targeting your desired crowd crucial. Farage and his Reform UK party appear to be seeking the support of football fans with a campaign of turquoise football shirts, and visits to clubs like Ipswich Town.

Politics

‘We better not blow it’: Both parties are fighting to win over working class voters

Published

6 hours ago

August 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans and Democrats are fighting over working class voters. Americans don’t believe the rhetoric.

Fifty-five percent of Americans think politicians are just trying to win votes when they say they will help the working class, according to new results from The Blue Light News Poll. It’s a view held by majorities of people who voted for President Donald Trump, who voted for Kamala Harris and who self-identify as working class.

Only one in four Americans who self-identify as working-class say politicians genuinely want to help them.

That wariness comes as both parties increasingly see working class voters as key to their winning coalitions. But The POLITICO Poll results show both parties face serious challenges to doing so.

Neither party does particularly well with Americans who identify as working class: 38 percent of them say Democrats best represent them, while 32 percent say Republicans. Americans, broadly, are almost identically split, with a 37 percent plurality saying Democrats best represent the interests of the working class, while 30 percent say Republicans.

Democrats wrestling with how to win back voters who have drifted toward the GOP — as their coalition has grown increasingly dominated by college-educated Americans — are locked in an intraparty battle over which wing of the party, progressives or moderates, best speaks to these voters.

“We’ve struggled with the working class for quite a while and it’s been a combination of being out of touch with working class values on a lot of culture issues and being seen as either not helpful or not helpful enough on economic issues,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), widely considered the leader of the progressive movement, told Playbook’s Will Steakin that progressive Democrats “are speaking to the needs of working families.”

“It is not just traditional Democrats or independents,” he said. “There are a lot of working-class Republicans who understand that there’s something wrong when we are the only major nation on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are trying to hold onto the gains Trump made in 2024 with working class voters — including Black and Latino voters frustrated with the Biden-era economy — at a time when cost of living remains voters’ top concern.

“With the [Iran] war, with gas prices, with cost of food, the working class is not happy with the president, and many who are independents and even some Republicans have said that he’s forgotten about them,” said former Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Renacci.

Who is working class?

Complicating both parties’ efforts to win over these voters is that Americans do not agree on what makes someone working class. Neither do lawmakers and party officials.

When asked whether the term “working class” describes them, a 59 percent majority of Americans broadly say it does, while just 31 percent say it does not, according to the survey conducted by London-based polling firm Public First. But when forced to choose from a list of labels — including wealthy, middle class, lower middle class, working class and poor — just 16 percent of adults say they identify as “working class.”

Americans are also divided over what characteristics define the working class.

Some politicians, including progressive New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Andy Schor, the centrist Democratic mayor of Lansing, Michigan, have argued the definition of working class is expansive — encompassing anyone who needs to work to pay their bills.

“If you’re not making enough money that you don’t have to work, then you’re working class,” said Schor in an interview. “The American Dream is to be able to work hard and get ahead, and people are not getting ahead like they used to, and they’ll look at the folks that they vote for and think, ‘Who can help me to get ahead?’”

The Blue Light News Poll illustrates the difficult path for the GOP to solidify its gains with working class Americans as economic concerns continue to be top of mind: More than a third of this group say they are not currently employed. A 35 percent plurality also say Trump, not former President Joe Biden, is fully responsible for the economy and many oppose the war in Iran, which most say has made things more expensive for them.

Half of self-identified working class Americans say Trump has spent too much time focusing on international affairs instead of on domestic issues.

“I think [Republican candidates] just got to tell the truth,” Renacci, the Ohio Republican, said. “You just have to start realizing that those middle class voters are struggling and they’re just looking for somebody who’s going to understand their issues and problems.”

The race for 2026

November will offer a major test of whether each party’s working class pitch is working, carrying implications that extend into 2028.

Candidates in both parties are racing to flex their working class bonafides this cycle, leaning on their biographies to signal ties to these voters. Trump pushed that playbook to extremes in 2024, when he briefly worked the fryer and drive-through window at McDonald’s as part of a campaign swing through Pennsylvania.

Republicans have continued that approach, with candidates and administration officials emphasizing their blue-collar roots on the campaign trail. Vice President JD Vance recently returned to his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, where he spoke at the steel plant where his grandfather worked.

In battleground Georgia, Rep. Mike Collins — the state’s GOP Senate nominee — often touts his background as a trucker. And GOP Sen. Susan Collins has broken with Trump on tariff policy, saying his trade fight with Canada hurts working families and small businesses in Maine, where she’s locked in a competitive battle for reelection.

These efforts come against the backdrop of increasing concerns about the economy, fueled by the ongoing Iran war.

Democrats, meanwhile, are divided over which flank of the party can best appeal to working class voters, a fissure that burst into public view during primary season, when a slate of progressives prevailed in high-profile contests.

“The working class are giving Democrats another look and we better not blow it,” said Kessler of Third Way. “Donald Trump got reelected based on the notion he was going to fight for you, working class men and women, and his first year and a half has been anything but that.”

Some Democrats have made their working class background central to their pitch: Sam Forstag, a union leader and former smokejumper, is running in an open district in western Montana that Trump won by double digits in 2024. Bob Brooks, a firefighter union chief, is challenging GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in Pennsylvania.

But some progressives are still running into limits: In Michigan, one of Democrats’ must-hold seats in November, the state’s divisive Senate primary illustrated that debate in real-time. Progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic nomination, performed best in the state’s wealthiest and most highly educated areas, while moderate Rep. Haley Stevens did better in places with lower average incomes and where fewer votes have college degrees.

Jessie Blaeser contributed to this report.

Politics

Trump’s Arab American allies in Michigan are jumping ship. Mike Rogers could pay the price.

Published

21 hours ago

August 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Four days before the 2024 election, Donald Trump declared in Dearborn, Michigan that “the Muslim population” is “liking Trump.” On Election Day, the state’s Arab Americans helped deliver Trump a victory.

Now, they want nothing to do with him — and are souring on the GOP overall.

Many Detroit-area Arab Americans, who swung hard to Trump over the war in Gaza and cost-of-living issues, are now saying they’re fed up with the ongoing war in Iran and slow peace process in Gaza. It’s a shift that could have direct consequences on the battle for Senate control, with former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers fighting to hold onto Trump’s 2024 gains against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim whose parents are Egyptian immigrants.

Trump’s perceived broken promises — exacerbated by GOP attacks against El-Sayed that some see as Islamophobic and racist — are pushing these voters out of reach for Rogers.

“[Trump] promised to make America great again,” said Albert Abbas, who presented a peace prize to Trump during his 2024 Dearborn visit. “Did he do that? Did he put American interests first? It’s the complete opposite.”

A dip in support from Arab American former Trump voters could hurt Rogers’ path to election in what’s shaping up to be a tough year nationally for the GOP. And it could offset gains he makes in other communities — including with some Jewish voters who are wary of El-Sayed for his harsh criticism of Israel and comments from him and his allies that some see as antisemitic. Both communities matter significantly in close elections, and Michigan has the largest proportion of Arab Americans in the country, with nearly 400,000 living in the state, as well as more than 100,000 Jews.

Michigan Republicans — who, just two years ago, dreamed of building sustainable support among the state’s Arab American population — now see community leaders shifting ranks.

“Once the administration got into the White House, everything we were told kind of flip-flopped,” said Hassan Nehme, who served as the Michigan Republican Party’s vice chair during the 2024 cycle and helped lead outreach to the Arab American community. “We lost all traction. Republicans are kind of dead in the water in the area right now.”

Dearborn-based Imam Husham Al-Husainy backed Trump in 2024 and was slated to offer a benediction at the inauguration but was removed from the program after complaints from pro-Israel conservatives. He said he now backs El-Sayed because Trump recanted on his promise for “no new wars.”

Amer Ghalib, a former Democratic mayor of Muslim-majority Hamtramck, backed Trump in 2024, and was later nominated by Trump to serve as ambassador to Kuwait, though he didn’t get confirmed in the face of bipartisan concerns about a history of allegedly antisemitic remarks. He said Republicans “should be more concerned about losing the long-term trust of the Arab American community than about losing the gains they made in 2024.”

“There is a tremendous work that needs to be done … to address people’s concerns and regain their trust,” Ghalib said.

And Faye Nemer, who leads the Dearborn-based Middle Eastern and North African American Chamber of Commerce, said the midterms will mark a “change in sentiment” in her community toward Republicans.

“Many voters, including myself, are now asking whether the policy promises we received bear any resemblance to the reality that we’re seeing on the ground,” said Nemer.

Rogers has not shied away from branding his opponent as a Muslim extremist. He’s hammered El-Sayed for campaigning with Hasan Piker, a prominent and controversial left-wing influencer who’s drawn accusations of antisemitism, as well as slamming El-Sayed for responding to an attack on a Michigan synagogue earlier this year by condemning it but saying “hurt people hurt people” because members of the attacker’s family had been killed by the Israeli military in Lebanon.

El-Sayed has condemned antisemitism throughout his campaign; in a statement distancing himself from Piker last week, he said “Antisemitism is a scourge, and we need to address it in all its forms”) On Saturday he apologized for his remarks after the synagogue attack,telling a group of Jewish Democrats that he’d “made a mistake” and that “nobody deserves to have their pain trampled on.”

Rogers’ allies have also circulated reports from conservative outlets that seek to link El-Sayed’s father-in-law to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“El-Sayed wants to represent Palestine,” Rogers said at the Michigan GOP convention last week. “I want to represent Michigan.”

Trump has weighed in, too: The week El-Sayed won the Democratic primary, the president told reporters in the Oval Office that the country is seeing “jihadists being elected all over the place.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s first ad of the general election called the Democratic nominee by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.

The NRSC ad will “alienate and distance” potential Arab American supporters, said Nemer.

“I most certainly will not support a candidate that is alienating and vilifying my community,” said Nemer, who met Trump during his 2024 visit to Dearborn. “I was fully prepared to support Mr. Rogers. … But after seeing the direction that he chose to proceed in, that’s given me a lot of pause.”

Nehme, the former state GOP vice chair, said many Arab Americans are drawn to El-Sayed because of his background, even though many are far more socially conservative than the Democratic nominee. “They’re not even really looking at politics anymore,” Nehme said.

During Rogers’ unsuccessful 2024 Senate bid, he acknowledged that his outspoken support for Israel caused some consternation for Muslim voters. That cycle, Trump won Dearborn, a Detroit suburb that is the only Arab-majority city in the U.S., by six points; Rogers ran behind him, losing in the city by two points. It was a significant improvement over 2020, when President Joe Biden and Democratic Sen. Gary Peters each won the city by around 40 points.

Monica Yatooma, who helped the Trump campaign’s outreach to Muslim and Arab American voters in 2024 before launching a failed bid for secretary of state this cycle, said she doubts Republicans can match Trump’s gains in Arab-majority areas in the current environment.

“The only reason [Arab Americans] voted for Trump is because they were voting against [Vice President] Kamala [Harris],” she said. “They weren’t voting for Trump, so they’re not really conservative voters, and there’s no value there for them with Mike Rogers that aligns with their values.”

It is unclear what, if anything, Rogers is doing to reach out to the community. Yatooma and Nehme, both Republicans, said they have seen little outreach from Rogers’ campaign.

“I’m hoping that they pull through and they come out and at least try to address the community,” Nehme said. “But in all actuality, I’m not sure how much good it’s going to do.”

Rogers’ campaign, when asked several questions about his outreach to the Arab American community, said “the Chaldean community has been a strong ally,” referring to a Christian ethnic group with Iraqi heritage whose largest community outside the Middle East resides in the Detroit area. Yatooma, who is Chaldean, said her ethnic community has historically voted for Republicans.

“Mike Rogers welcomes all Michiganders, regardless of faith, socioeconomic status, or background, to our campaign to Get Michigan Working Again,” said Alyssa Brouillet, spokesperson for the Rogers campaign, in a statement. “The same can’t be said about Abdul El-Sayed, who continues to fan the flames of antisemitism, sympathizes with the terrorist attacker who tried to mass murder 140 kids in a Michigan synagogue, and refuses to disavow Hasan Piker, who calls Jews ‘inbred.’”El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak called attacks invoking El-Sayed’s faith and identity “cheap.”

“Mike Rogers is resorting to cheap attacks to distract from his deep record as a corrupt career politician who has taken millions from Big Pharma,” Wozniak said in a statement. “Michiganders see right through it, and they’re not going to let Mike Rogers distract from the fact he’s spent thirty years in Washington making himself and his billionaire donors richer while selling out working families.”

Without hearing directly from the Rogers campaign or state party leaders, Arab American voters say their community is likely to swing back to the left this election.

Could Rogers “go into Dearborn and have those conversations and fix that?” asked Yatooma. “I think yeah, absolutely. I just don’t know if he’s doing it.”

Politics

On Fox News, progressives score points and stumble

Published

2 days ago

August 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The night after verbally sparring with Abdul El-Sayed on primetime television, Fox News host Jesse Watters had kind words for the progressive Michigan Senate nominee.

“I like him,” Watters remarked Tuesday to his co-hosts on “The Five,” albeit right after saying he doesn’t trust him. “I don’t want to like him, but I like him.”

Less than 24 hours prior, the two had engaged in an adversarial, wide-ranging interview in which Watters pressed El-Sayed to explain his stance on transgender women in sports and his support for the Green New Deal. For his part, El-Sayed tried to spin Watters’ pointed questions into opportunities to recite his core campaign slogan and call his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, a “beta” male.

Who exactly won the interaction is less relevant than the fact that El-Sayed, a progressive, went on one of the nation’s top conservative-leaning cable news shows to spar with one of Fox News’ stars.

His performance, in which El-Sayed gave little ground to Watters — regularly talking over him to finish a point and negging him for the pointed nature of his questions — presents a new model for how some progressives, hot off a string of primary victories, are looking to market themselves to a wider range of voters while also showing they can withstand scrutiny, or even fight back, on America’s marquee conservative network.

“Even if you only get 30 seconds, that’s the length of a political campaign ad, and they’re basically handing you air time to speak to a couple million people, potentially,” said Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief of progressive magazine Current Affairs and occasional guest on the network.

Those appearances, however, are fraught with risk. Every second-too-long pause, jumbled response or nodding agreement on live television can be instantaneously clipped and become fodder to delegitimize their platform. It’s already happened a handful of times this cycle.

“When you don’t do well is when you go on and hand them exactly what they want, by appearing to not know what you’re talking about,” Robinson said.

Democrats have long appeared on Fox News as a way to reach conservative audiences who otherwise might prove unreachable.

But those trudging to Fox News’ green rooms had, in the past, broadly been more centrist Democrats trying to make a general election case than progressives gearing up for a brawl, particularly with the network’s primetime lineup of conservative opinion hosts.

Potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, considered one of the party’s strongest communicators and a self-described moderate, has been a regular on the network dating back to his 2020 run — a strategy he cast in 2024, at least, as an effort to argue on behalf of Democrats for viewers who don’t usually hear their side of an issue.

Progressives now say they see a similar value proposition. Conservative media has spent much of the ongoing election cycle scrutinizing progressives and, specifically, the Democratic Socialists of America — who have endorsed multiple candidates running in November. Going on Fox News, some argue, simultaneously gives the left an opportunity to vouch for itself while also giving the movement more visibility.

“It’s very exciting for us as leftists to finally have to think about these things,” Robinson said. “They didn’t used to invite us on cable news shows.”

When reached for comment, Fox News spokesperson Jessica Ketner pointed to viewership data from Nielsen indicating its spot as the most viewed cable network in the U.S., with an average of 2.5 million viewers during primetime.

A host of progressive candidates and figureheads accepted interviews with the network’s hosts this summer. Democratic socialists like Pennsylvania House nominee Chris Rabb and Wisconsin state Rep. Francesca Hong, then in the closing days of a tightly contested gubernatorial primary, both appeared on the network, as did Gustavo Gordillo, a co-chair of the New York City chapter of the DSA— which endorsed several primary winners in the city’s cobalt blue districts.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), another occasional guest on Fox, said in a text message to Blue Light News that, rather than going on to try to show up the host, he wants the network’s audience “thinking that I deeply love our country, have ideas about how to build the future economy for every American and am a decent guy worth having a meal with.”

The purpose of those interviews, he continued, “is to try to find some common ground in our toxic political culture.”

Monday’s interview with Watters marked El-Sayed’s third interview on the network, and first since winning his primary in early August.

In a statement, El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak said that “while Mike Rogers refuses to debate and ducks requests from media outlets, Abdul isn’t afraid of a fight.” He added that El-Sayed has been “showing up, taking tough questions and making his case directly to voters” throughout the campaign.

But progressives have also had their fair share of stumbles on the network.

DSA co-chair Megan Romer was widely criticized for an August interview in which she provided one-word affirmations to Fox host Shannon Bream’s inquiry into the group’s platform — which soon provided ammunition to conservatives looking to paint the organization as dangerously extreme.

“Replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them?” Bream asked.

“Yep,” Romer responded.

Such misfires, Democratic consultant Mark Longabaugh said, can partially be attributed to the relative inexperience of some progressives who haven’t taken interviews with similarly adversarial outlets.

“You just may not be aware of the way that interview’s gonna unfold and how tough it’s gonna be,” said Longabaugh, who advised Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign.

The DSA didn’t make Romer available for an interview, but the group’s spokesperson, Priscilla Yeverino, said in an interview that “we see the feedback, and we see the blowback.”

“The co-chairs absolutely take that responsibility, and they take it in stride,” Yeverino added. “That’s what they use to continue to improve and fine tune our messaging and to try to broaden our audience.”

Still, progressives say the reward outweighs the risk — as long as the candidates come prepared. Corbin Trent, a Democratic consultant who cofounded Justice Democrats and a former communications director for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), said that a candidate greatly benefits from having time to develop a cohesive worldview that makes answering off-speed questions easier.

Trent, who has appeared on the network multiple times, added that the short nature of the TV hit gives little time to debate the nuances of political ideology — making every second count.

“You can’t go into there and have a conversation about what they want to have a conversation about,” he said. “You have to talk about the things that you think are important in your platform.”