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The sporting metaphor is an essential piece of equipment for politicians to keep in their kit bag.
Making a speech without one these days is like trying to drive across the fairway with a putter – it simply doesn’t hit as hard.
But be warned, try too hard to cram those metaphors into somewhere they don’t belong and you may as well be playing snooker with a javelin… or something.
Enough of that. You may have noticed that the great wave of political drama over the past week-and-a-half has brought with it a wealth of slightly tortured analogies.
Wes Streeting caught the most attention by tweeting: ‘We need our best players on the pitch. There is no doubt that Andy Burnham is one of them.’
However, it was Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy who reached transcendence with an extraordinary spillage during an appearance on Sky News this morning.
Chastising Labour MPs for backing efforts to overthrow Sir Keir Starmer, he told presenter Sophy Ridge: ‘Now is the time to stop the own goals, to get on the pitch, to pass the ball amongst ourselves, to play in the right direction, to score some goals on behalf of the British public.’
It might not be a ringing compliment for Labour to imply they were somehow scoring own goals without even being on the pitch.
This was just the latest example of football infiltrating the seismic Makerfield by-election campaign, despite it having not yet officially started.
Of course, the result of the vote will determine whether Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, gets the seat in the House of Commons which would allow him to challenge Starmer for the leadership.
News cameras have captured the mayor out on a morning run several times in the past week, always wearing a classic Everton shirt.
Yesterday evening, Burnham tweeted about watching the Scouse club’s 3-1 defeat to Sunderland and speaking to punters who were also in attendance.
And in an interview with ITV News, he said he wanted to ‘get rid’ of VAR tech, arguing: ‘You can’t celebrate a goal because you think someone, somewhere in an industrial unit is going to rule it out.’
With that point of view, he may clash with another top Labour figure who told Metro in April 2024: ‘I would change the offside rule.
‘I wouldn’t change VAR, I’d change the offside rule to make it more beneficial for the attacking team.’
That figure? Correct: Sir Keir Starmer.
For his part, the PM ditched any imagery to say plainly this morning that he would be sticking around ‘to serve my country and carry out my duties’.
He also said he would be backing the Labour candidate in Makerfield – to be officially confirmed on Sunday – ‘100%’, arguing it will be a case of ‘Labour versus Reform’.
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