Why Donald Trump's victory makes it more important than ever for sport to speak out

It was a debate about the ‘creepy clown’ craze, a few weeks ago, which revealed how the significance of fact has vanished for millions, to be replaced by something with more entertainment value or instant impact - such as ‘Brexit will reap £350m for the NHS’, ‘Barack Obama wasn’t a natural born American citizen’ or ‘Mexican immigrants are rapists.’

The clowns were being discussed a part of the two-day ‘Battle of Ideas’ event at London’s Barbican where a concerned head-teacher described how his pupils had arrived armed with baseball bats one day, after an Instagram post said the ‘clowns’ would target their school next. ‘We are coming’. The perpetrators of the craze weren’t helping, he said.

The teacher was promptly told by Liam Deacon – a ‘journalist/reporter’ at Breitbart News, the far-right website and source of vile conspiracies whose former head has run Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, to stop being so serious. “Public life can be a bit boring,” said Deacon, revelling in a sense of notoriety on the debate’s expert panel. “People who are not interested in politics can connect to public life in this way instead. It’s a lot less scary than the paedophile craze.”

A “culture reporter” from Newsweek magazine, Tufayel Ahmed, who was sharing the stage with Deacon, agreed with him. The news headlines had been a bit grim this year so it was necessary to find something to “disturb the headlines,” Ahmed said. This was a so-called mainstream publication talking. The headteacher shook his head.

Invent your own headlines and reality: that’s the means of success in public life in this post-fact era, and if we have learned one thing from Trump’s extraordinary ascendency to the White House then it is the failure of those entrusted with political discussion to provide an alternative reality which reflects life out there in the real world. “There’s a market for seeing people scared," the ‘journalist/reporter’ Deacon said of the clowns. “People are bored sick of a PC society.” If an individual of such limited intellectual capacity is our go-to man then others have palpably failed.

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What hope of a new politics that might reach those who would rather watch reality TV – and elect a reality TV star as president - and that engages with the more prosaic real life? Not much. The convulsions of Brexit and Trump are payback for a political establishment which demeaned and insulted millions with a belief that it could manipulate the message and spin. The Gordon Brown we find opining on the consequences of Brexit today is the very same Brown who became more obsessed than any other political leader with how he could manipulate the masses through spin. There is a clue to his modus operandi in the title of political journalist Steve Richards’ masterful book on Brown, published six years ago. 'Whatever it Takes'.

This seems like a day when the sweetshop of sport has extremely little significance, though perhaps it is a place we can look to, for messages to which those “bored sick” of the politicians might tune in. Premier League football is a reality TV show all of its own – Machiavellian Mourinho versus Saint Pep – yet it is the new religion, too, occupied by individuals actually capable of grabbing the attention of those the politicians cannot reach.

That’s why Gary Lineker’s contribution to the conversation about young refugees was so welcome, two weeks ago. Lineker found himself “spanked” by the tabloids, as he put it. He was accused of “sneering at ordinary Brits” by The Sun, a newspaper whose front pages are at the leading edge of the post-fact era, insulting its readers intelligence with rabble-rousing straight out of the Trump manual.

All the more reason for him to have displayed the modernity that The Sun so graphically lacks. Lineker’s few words of observation had the power to influence or persuade those to look beyond their prejudice. That one tweet was, in its way, as significant as the searing recent despatches from the Calais Jungle by The Guardian’s Amelia Gentleman, because there are many who will consider her and her organisation’s work not their kind of thing. Lineker should know that his contribution was celebrated that weekend at the Barbican, where the presence of Breitbart’s Deacon illustrated the desire to hear all views, have the debate and be challenged.

The American sporting world has led the way in political engagement, with Colin Kaepernick’s protest against police killings of unarmed black citizens, supported by Serena Williams among many others, and Lebron James’ written endorsement of Hillary Clinton for policies that wouldn't "divide us more” in the face of violence affecting African-Americans.

But the new political order needs more like them. Things seem desperate when so much is invested in Joey Barton as the mouthpiece. True, he embarked on a philosophy degree course but his new autobiography offered no sign that he is some kind of trailblazer. He was an advocate of Remain and is anti-Trump, he tells us in the book, though there’s been no sign of an on-going contribution to those debates. In a sense, Barton speaks for his native Huyton, on Merseyside, far more than its resident Labour MP, George Howarth. His childhood on St John’s estate there has “a frontier feel… and was earmarked as a social dustbin, following Liverpool’s slum clearance programme,” his book tells us. Then speak for its people, Joey.

As usual, the continental European footballers revealed themselves on Wednesday to be far more mature contributors to the political space than the British. “Let’s put all the idiots around the world in power and see what happens,” Manchester City’s Vincent Kompany tweeted. “Would love to speak to someone who is pro-Trump to find out what is going on in their head,” observed Tottenham’s Jan Vertonghen. “Can't believe what I'm seeing. This is so embarrassing."

Barton added: “President Trump. Only in America.” It was a start, though the course of the next few years requires more from those with an influence which the politicians would kill for.