Four years ago, when Qatar hosted the World Cup, Keir Starmer had a fit of the vapours.
As leader of the opposition, he blocked Labour MPs from attending. Though personally a keen football fan (he supports Arsenal), Starmer announced that he would not attend the final even if England was in it.
The Qatar World Cup turned out to be a success, and many of the criticisms against the Gulf Arab state on human rights grounds were exaggerated or invented.
Four years later, Starmer is Britain’s prime minister. And in a characteristic display of double standards, we’ve heard not a squeak of protest from Downing Street about the US World Cup - yet the case for boycotting President Donald Trump’s United States is more powerful than the case against Qatar. Far more powerful.
Three months ago, the US and Israel launched a criminal and unprovoked attack on Iran. The assault was not authorised by the United Nations, meaning that the US and Israel were guilty under international law of an act of aggression.
The Nuremberg tribunal, set up to punish Nazi criminals after World War Two, described this type of action as the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”.
Regardless, Starmer’s Britain was happy to allow the US to use British bases for what were euphemistically called “defensive” actions. On the first day of the war, more than 170 schoolchildren and teachers were killed in a US strike on a girls’ school in Minab.
Sadly, that is not the worst of the atrocities committed by the US since the Qatar World Cup.
For the last two and a half years, the US has been a partner in what most scholars and experts now accept to be a genocide in Gaza. Among those slaughtered in the Palestinian territory with US help were more than 500 footballers.
Incredibly, the US is today protecting Israelis wanted on war-crimes charges - including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - by imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In another violation of international law, the US earlier this year bombed the South American state of Venezuela in order to seize its president, Nicolas Maduro.
Any other country with a remotely similar record as a rogue state and menace to global peace would face a boycott campaign
Trump has threatened to invade Greenland and appears to be planning to invade Cuba. The US has also killed more than 200 people in strikes against boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean - without providing a shred of evidence to justify its claims that the victims were drug traffickers.
There is an overwhelming case that Trump, and the toxic coterie that surrounds him, should themselves face trial on war-crimes charges. Any other country with a remotely similar record as a rogue state and menace to global peace would face a boycott campaign, as Qatar did four years ago over a comparatively much smaller controversy.
And now we come to the World Cup itself, whose opening ceremony is today. It is already a shambles.
Four years ago, in the heat of Qatar, seven out of eight stadiums were supplied with state-of-the-art solar-powered air conditioning. By contrast, only three of the 16 stadiums (across the US, Mexico and Canada) have AC. Players and fans will boil in soaring temperatures.
In Qatar, every spectator was provided with free use of public transport. Nothing similar is contemplated in the US.
The final will be held in the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which fans can’t reach on foot. Usually, the return fare to the stadium is $13, but the price has now surged past $100.
In summary, spectators face being ripped off, even though the infrastructure for the US World Cup is nowhere near the quality of Qatar’s.
Much more troubling is the racist US treatment of foreign fans and players, especially from Middle Eastern countries. Iranian fans recently learned that their ticket allocation had been cancelled just days before the tournament was set to begin.
