What football fans say when you ask them if they’re ‘woke’

Close your eyes and imagine an archetypal football fan. What does he (and it probably is a “he”) look like?

In your mind’s eye, he might be wearing Burberry and/or a replica football shirt. He might be sporting a very, very short haircut. He will likely have the whitest of white trainers.

What of his political opinions? Will he be really quite right wing? At the very least, it’s very unlikely that he’ll be politically correct, right?

Wrong.

It turns out that the average football fan in 2023 is, well, a bit woke. Polling published last week by Public First (where I am a director) suggests that footy supporters are, in fact, rather less right wing and rather more right-on.

The results are, it has to be said, striking on a number of issues.

More than 50 per cent, for example, said they would back the government’s new independent football regulator forcing all players, managers and staff to attend courses on diversity, equality and inclusion. Just 18 per cent were against the idea.

Some 54 per cent of fans backed the idea of the new regulator hitting clubs with fines for offensive chanting during matches, while 57 per cent supported giving the body the means to set standards to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Perhaps most strikingly, respondents were more likely to back the idea of equal pay between men’s football and women’s football, with 45 per cent supportive of the proposal, compared with just 18 per cent who opposed it.

It seems your average football fan is now a very long way from the lazy stereotype I outlined the top of this article.

This could be for two main reasons.

Some will say – with sadness – that the wokeratti in the stands simply represent the newest development in the middle class-ification of football. That it’s the latest example of what Roy Keane famously condemned as “the prawn sandwich brigade”.

Back in 2000, as football was riding the wave of Cool Britannia and it became socially acceptable for professional people in the workplace to take part in “footy banter”, Keane warned that the suits turning up in corporate boxes, drinking free booze and scoffing canapes were ruining the atmosphere at home matches.

The process identified by the midfield enforcer has of course continued in the nearly 25 years since, and we know from extensive surveys over many years that the middle classes are, in general, rather more liberal than their working-class friends and neighbours.

But I strongly suspect there’s more to it than that.

The results of the polling also reflects a wider trend in English and British society towards being tolerant and even welcoming of minorities, of strongly supporting gender equality, and of finding racism abhorrent.

In short, we as a country – and that includes the thousands and thousands of men, women, boys and girls who flock to football matches every week – are becoming socially more open. This is a great story, and not often told.

Unforgivable chanting and appalling behaviour does sometimes happen at football matches, but most people present are horrified by it and condemn it both in the stands at the time and on social media later.

And so, the findings of our polling should stand as a stark warning for those Conservatives who think that stoking a culture war will polarise society and bring voters in their millions back to Tory colours. It simply won’t work. They are on the wrong side of history. The great majority in this country simply aren’t buying what they’re trying to sell.