The police have made a mistake. Keir Starmer is right to wade in

The decision not to allow visitors from Tel Aviv was made by the West Midlands police on the grounds of the putative threat to public safety. The police took advice from the Birmingham Safety Advisory Group (SAG), on which body sit representatives of Birmingham city council, the British Transport Police and the various emergency services of the West Midlands. Earlier this month, the SAG advised the organisers of the Diwali Mela festival in Handsworth to cancel, following the Manchester synagogue attack. Last week they declined to issue the relevant safety certificates to Aston Villa.

At which point, all tranquil reason disappeared. No sooner had the news broken than every self-appointed performative controversialist had waded in to point out how Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv proved they had been right about everything, all along. Ayoub Khan, the independent local MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, was delighted that the police had, in his unlikely view, taken notice of the petition he had organised to prevent travel from Tel Aviv. Zarah Sultana took time off from disorganising a new political party to demand that Uefa ban all Israeli teams from competing in its competitions, a view echoed by Mothin Ali, the deputy leader of the Green party.

Kemi Badenoch raised the temperature in the other direction by calling the decision “a national disgrace”. Israel’s foreign minister called it “shameful”. Nigel Farage said, quite wrongly, in fact almost incomprehensibly, “this takes racial discrimination to a whole new level”. Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, who will never knowingly allow a bandwagon to roll past, demanded that the home secretary intervene, to use public order units and make unspecified sackings he knew not where. All of them implied, without quite being so candid, that the West Midlands police had come to an antisemitic judgment or, at the least, bowed to the pressure they felt from antisemites.

In this context, it seems almost quaint to insist that perhaps everything isn’t quite as easy as this makes it sound. For the avoidance of doubt, I think that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans should be permitted to come to Birmingham. I think the police have made a mistake and that the prime minister is right to seek to reverse that decision.

That said, this doesn’t make the decision “shameful”, and it doesn’t mean that West Midlands police are complicit by their capitulation in terrible racism. The police are in the philosophically delicate position of having to balance security with freedom – and those of us who make our living from typing in a quiet room should also note that they, not us, will place their officers on the frontline of the fight. And, let’s be blunt about it, there is every chance of a fight. On Friday, the egregious Tommy Robinson posted on X: “Who’s coming to support Maccabi Tel Aviv at Villa Park….?” The Football Policing Unit informed the Home Office over a week ago that restrictions on visiting fans might be necessary because violence was likely. The Tel Aviv fans will be met with hostility and the police have a duty to uphold public safety. If they conclude that the safety of the travelling fans would be ensured by them staying in Tel Aviv, I don’t think they deserve to be labelled as a stain on the British national character for that.

The likelihood of violence is increased by the fact that the supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv are not exactly angels themselves. Footage has been circulating, from November last year, in which they are seen chanting “Death to the Arabs” and tearing up Palestinian flags on the streets of Amsterdam. These clips have been misused in a dishonest support of a ban on the grounds that Britain is under no obligation to allow racists to enter the country. If we took that seriously, there would be no away travel at football matches at all. Plenty of teams have a vociferous minority of fans who are unpleasant and violent.

The decision is complicated by the fact that there are precedents for bans on the grounds of public safety. The fans of Dutch team Ajax, who are notorious across Europe, were prevented from travelling to Marseille last month. Italy will briefly suspend the Schengen agreement to allow a ban on the fans of Eintracht Frankfurt from travelling to Napoli for the game on 4 November. All of which is to say that the police have a point, although not in the end, in my view, a good enough point. The correct response is to allow them to travel and, should anyone chant “Death to the Arabs” in the streets around Villa Park, they should be arrested.

It is a complex situation, but the mood of political argument does not allow for complexity or contemplation. In that sense, this drama is a parable of the conundrum facing Keir Starmer as a political figure. Caught between two factions who do not want to talk to one another, let alone be reconciled, he does not naturally assume the tone of assertive certainty that is the demand of the moment.

The country is split into two tribes, rather like a football crowd. Though party affiliation has now split five ways, every political argument has collapsed into binary: you can go to the match versus no you cannot, the visitors are goodies or baddies. On one side stand the outraged on the left wing facing the outraged on the right wing. And there stands the prime minister in the middle, forced to play a game he would rather referee, no doubt shaking his head at the stupidity of it all.

Photograph by Mouneb Taim/Getty Images