But when the Industry and Parliament Trust very kindly invited a bunch of us whips to see the brilliant This House by the brilliant James Graham, this was the (slightly odd) situation. We left the real opposition whips office in the Palace of Westminster to a theatrical version set up in the National to tell the story of the 1974-79 parliament.

These were turbulent times, and the fractious politics reflected global uncertainty that buffeted Britain from all sides. The whips of that day were fighting to keep the United Kingdom united, looking to smaller parties to get crucial victories on important votes, while the country wrestled with economic change and unrest. So no parallels there with today, then.

The few women in the play are particularly strong characters. Ann Taylor, for example, is portrayed as a formidable, determined woman who changed the landscape in parliament. From what I know of her in real life this picture is spot on. The Tories, are delightful buffers whose self-confidence is their strength, but undoes them. It wouldn’t be for me to say how true this is, of course.

But what I found thought-provoking was the class divide that existed inside British parliamentary politics. The Labour whips are by and large working-class ‘fixers’. They are the folk who use their practical skills to get the business through. They negotiate, cajole, and bargain their way through, using skills acquired from pits and factory floors. What might be thought of as Labour’s intellectual elite are absent from the play.

South London’s Bob Mellish (chief whip under Harold Wilson) is portrayed as making a crucial mistake in backing the wrong candidate for leader to replace Wilson. His reason for this decision – in the play – was the chance to step outside the whips office and ‘take a seat round that table’. If the real Bob Mellish did ever have such feelings, he wouldn’t be the first Labour MP to wonder if the somewhat artificial barriers between the ‘do-ers’ and the ‘thinkers’ in my party were too high.

I don’t want to say too much about the conclusion of the play. That is, the portrayal of the loss – by one crucial vote – of the no confidence motion that ushered in the Thatcher government in 1979.

I was not alive during these events, but I could not help but ponder, as the piece closed, the impact on friends and family – and of the communities I now represent – of the Thatcher government. It wasn’t good. The unemployment and loss of human potential caused is probably the reason I’m in politics.

The reasons for the advent of the Thatcher government were complicated, and of course include the disputes within the Labour movement then. But seeing that link between a broken whips’ deal with the minor parties and the massive economic and social impact of the post-1979 Tory governments really struck home that all we do in Westminster (even when some parts of it appear trivial and inward looking) affects the communities we serve.

In that respect, combined with the emotional punch of decent people struggling against the odds, I will just say this of the ending of the play: it was heart breaking.

Alison McGovern is the MP for Wirral South and tweets @Alison_McGovern

In recent months, we have seen an extra £1bn diverted into the expansion of academies programme at the expense of struggling schools. We have a £3.4bn stockpile of supplies the MoD no longer needs, while the cancellation of the InterCity West Coast franchise competition cost the taxpayer at least £50m.

All these individual headaches certainly don’t help to quell the migraine that is keeping a tight rein on spending.  In a bid to help and to understand the bigger picture, we now have access to the Whole of Government Accounts, albeit 19 months out of date.

The PAC discovered that once this document has been produced, the departmental boards – the government’s key vehicle for control and planning – don’t review it. We have a document that could inform budgets across the board and save millions lining bins in Whitehall.

The National Audit Office expanded on this theme in their study into integration across government. Only a quarter of the future activity proposed in departmental business plans mention joint working with other departments, while six departments described themselves as ‘weak’ at collaborative working.

The Institute for Government’s latest report on Financial Leadership for Government looks into this state of affairs, and exposes a Government machine that needs a second look; a system whose concept of joined-up thinking leaves much to be desired.

The fifteen departments of Whitehall, isolated from each other’s scrutiny, are beholden to their own methods of balancing the books. While the Treasury has a strong hand on the tiller when it comes to spending control, they have limited say over spending and planning within departments.

Variance in spending reviews and the changing political faces of policy mean it may be difficult to create a more uniform approach to budgeting, it is true. But when the current structure means the concept of ‘best practice’ is an alien one and smarter spending is only driven by the need for savings in a particular portfolio’s budget, then more needs to be done.

This is not an unrealistic goal either.  The report demonstrate that the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada all have a central financial figure that at the very least has some input into departmental decision making and performance management.

As the IfG report asserts, the concept of not having such a centralised figure would be unthinkable to a global conglomerate or any large business. I would suggest that Whitehall could have much to learn from their private compatriots – or the team working diligently just down the road.

Nick Smith is MP for Blaenau Gwent and a member of the Progress strategy board

Photo: www.gov.uk

But whilst thoughts and minds were rightly elsewhere, another damning verdict was being passed upon the government’s economic strategy. New statistics revealed that compared to 2010, there are now an extra 32,000 young people between the ages of 19 and 24 not in work, training or education.

This is hardly surprising. Despite three out of four of our chief executives saying that creating a highly skilled workforce should be the government’s highest priority for the year ahead, there appears to be little appetite for delivering the broader skills settlement out economy so desperately needs.

Indeed, since coming to power, the government has devalued apprenticeships, undermined careers guidance, scrapped work experience and downgraded successful vocational courses such as the engineering diploma.

Such is the narrowness of the Conservative vision for Britain. But the only ‘global race’ their low-skill, low-wage strategy can win is the race to the bottom. Rather, we need a ‘One Nation’ economy that improves our competitiveness and raises living standards for the majority. This must be built upon high skills, innovation, and dynamic, technologically sophisticated companies. Therefore it is clear we need the best skilled workforce in the world.

This week, as part of Labour’s Policy Review, the One Nation Skills Taskforce published its interim report, investigating how we might begin to achieve this daunting aspiration. Chaired by Professor Chris Husband of the Institute of Education, it is stark about the multiple challenges we face.

We have acute skills shortages in crucial sectors (such as engineering); too many young people lacking employability skills; low levels of employer involvement; inconsistent standards in further education; a chronic lack of good quality advice for navigating the transition to work; a dearth of high quality apprenticeships; a deeply damaging divide between vocational and academic pathways; and an education system that, for better or worse, is becoming increasingly fragmented.

However, perhaps the biggest systemic problem the report uncovers is the pervasive disconnect between the education system and local labour markets. All too often skills policy is isolated from industrial and economic policy. The result is a system that too often fails to meet the needs of either employers or young people.

The report makes two excellent recommendations to help close this gap and raise standards.

First, Labour would require all FE teachers to have at least level 2 GCSE English and Maths. English and Maths are core skills for all youngsters and Labour has rightly committed to making their study compulsory to 18. But whilst many FE teachers do an outstanding job, of the 40 per cent of further education pupils who don’t get level 2 qualifications at 16, only 20 per cent go onto acquire it by 19. This needs to change and we must be relentless in driving up the quality of teaching at FE colleges.

Second, to help bring the education system and the labour market closer together, we would ensure that all vocational teachers spend time every year with local businesses and industry to keep their skills and experience fresh.

Of course Labour has already made clear its determination to raise standards for youngsters for whom the academic route is not appropriate at Key Stage 5 with our gold standard technical baccalaureate. Crucially, this would directly involve businesses in accrediting the quality of courses. Yet to build a truly ‘holistic’ dual track system that is aligned with local labour markets will require much more. That is what business wants and that Labour is committed to delivering.

Tristram Hunt MP is shadow education minister.

Photo: Mike Lambert

One of the most important areas of overall change and generational difference is on views of welfare. A question that we regularly ask at Ipsos MORI – whether the government should increase benefits for the poor even if it leads to higher taxes – reveals that support for more spending has halved and opposition nearly doubled between 1987 and 2011.

But it is vital to understand for future welfare policy how this varies between different generations. Our new analysis suggests three major patterns. First, all generations show a downward trend in their support for more welfare spending. There is a clear ‘period effect’, where the general mood has shifted. There will be a number of explanations for this, including the shifting economic context, but also the changing narrative around welfare benefits. Studies have shown an increase in media coverage in recent years of the ‘undeserving’ nature of many benefit recipients.

Second, the generations are different and stay different from each other. This suggests that attitudes to welfare do have a very important generational aspect: the context you grew up in is important in forming your views.

Third, there is a clear generational rank order: the prewar generation is the most supportive of further redistribution through welfare, followed by baby boomers, then generation X then generation Y. The practical point here for policymakers is that the younger generation seems to have a different view of welfare, even after allowing for the general shift in attitudes across society.

Some of this could, of course, be explained by differing stages in life people are at, and for example, varying personal financial resources and ability to pay taxes. But it is a pattern seen across a number of questions, including one on overall pride felt in the welfare state.

If we look just at overall levels of pride, we see very little change over the last decade. But this masks huge generational differences : 70 per cent of the prewar generation think the welfare state is one of Britain’s proudest achievements, but only 30 per cent of generation Y do – and neither has shifted in their views in the past decade. This should not be too surprising, given the direct experience of the creation of the welfare state among the oldest generation – but we need to remind ourselves of this range when deciding future direction.

Overall, the survey data suggests a more ‘individualised’ perspective on rights and responsibilities among younger cohorts, which is perhaps related to three key points. First, the purpose and importance of the welfare state is not just a distant memory for most young people, it is not a memory at all.

Second, the welfare state itself is much messier now, with incremental shifts blurring understanding of whether it is based on contributory principles, universalism or means-testing. And, third, at a more individual level, young people are receiving much less support now across such a wide range of areas of their lives, and they have responded by expecting to have to look after themselves more.

The challenges are very clear; the response much less so. We are exploring generational views of welfare further in a project for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, jointly with Demos, which reports in the summer. So far the research suggests it is not just a problem of policy or perception, but both. The welfare system needs to have greater relevance to a wider range of people, and to be explained in a way that provides a coherent picture of its purpose that we are all part of – a contract that seems relevant not just to those old enough to remember what came before.

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Bobby Duffy is managing director of the Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute

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Photo: Pete Ashton

Norman Stoller is a self-made man who made his money from hard work and he cares passionately about our town. Like all of us who care about the town he knows that prolonged unemployment is a curse for too many families in Oldham. We are currently top of the Greater Manchester unemployment list and we need to give a ‘hand up’ to the more than 8,000 local people out of work.

The challenge is significant – so the response must be equally substantial.

We can’t wait for someone to sort this out for us. We can’t sit here in the hope that the UK economy will recover and the Oldham simply gets its share. If we do that, we will fail again.

When the last boom came, Oldham flagged. Much money went into the public sector without creating an environment for growth so that – when the tough times did come – we simply weren’t able to withstand the force of the current recession. But don’t take my word for it, the facts are there and tell a story of one of the world leaders of the industrial revolution losing half of its remaining manufacturing base from 1998 to 2008.

We have embarked on one of the most ambitious town centre regeneration programmes in the North West. It will create jobs and breed confidence but we need to do more to get Oldham working.

No one organisation, sector or approach can do this so we need to marshal all the resources available. It simply won’t do for us to stand by and see another generation cast aside, forgotten or left without hope and ambition. Our young people are our future. This just isn’t a nice thing to do – it’s essential for the long term future of our town.

By 2015 we will have in place the Oldham Guarantee which will mean no young person will leave school without the guarantee of a job, education, apprenticeship or support towards self employment. We want to show young people that Oldham is a town that believes in you – a town which once led the world and hasn’t lost the spirit of enterprise. Our message is simple – if you are willing to roll up your sleeves and get on in life then you will have the support of the town behind you.

Get Oldham Working is more than a town hall project – it is restoring civic pride. That’s why the donation of Norman is so important – he believes in what we are trying to do and wants to encourage a new generation of entrepreneurs in the town.  We want to offer hope to as many families as possible. So as part of our ambition to become a town guided by cooperative principles we will be asking each of our 7,000 businesses to do their bit and take on one new member of staff or apprentice. We will do our bit as a council by offering help and advice to those smaller businesses willing to do this.

We also need to make more of our position in the Greater Manchester city region by connecting our residents with jobs beyond our borough boundaries. Transport and skills are key to this, but actually just making people aware of the opportunities would be a good start. If 80 per cent of those out of work access the job centre where only 20 per cent of vacancies are advertised we have to do more to find new ways of connecting residents with job opportunities and not simply rely on a failed system which locks people into a cycle of poor quality employment where zero hour contracts, agency work and part time jobs are increasingly the norm for many families.

As leader, my ambition extends to my own party. We know that in too many instances local councillors don’t reflect the local population particularly in terms of age. Frankly we don’t make it easy by having too many meetings that serve no purpose and not acting as talent scouts in terms of attracting local activists. That’s why Oldham Labour has launched its own apprenticeship scheme to encourage those who care about the town and its future to find out more about the Labour party. It’s open to all residents who share our values and runs for twelve months with a combination of practical campaigning with study sessions on the role and purpose of the Labour party and its relevance to Oldham’s future. Launched last month it has already attracted over a dozen participants who fully represent the diversity of the borough and will they will hopefully be providing some competitive challenge to myself and cabinet colleagues in future years!

I have great hopes for my party but we have to face a fundamental truth that too many of our fellow citizens have lost faith in us. We have to address the concerns that matter to them. Westminster politics are just too distant for many. We have to root our Labour values in our towns and cities and make Civic Pride part of those values.

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Jim MacMahon is leader of Oldham council. He tweets @CllrJimMcMahon

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For information about the Get Oldham Working initiative please contact Faridah Newman. For more details of the Oldham Labour Apprentice please contact Phil Gaul

The gender gap in entrepreneurship has received less attention as a public policy matter than other areas of inequality. But the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s latest report on the issue shows there are fewer women entrepreneurs then men in OECD countries.

For Britain, tackling our own gender gap is critical. Research suggests that £42bn would be added to the UK economy if we had the same level of female entrepreneurship as in the United States. If women started businesses at the same rate as men there could be an additional 150,000 extra start-ups each year. Women-led businesses have often started out as community enterprises or niche businesses which go on to become national or global brands. In the US, women own 30 per cent of all small businesses as against just 19 per cent in the UK. In London just 10 per cent of small- and medium-sized businesses are run by women – the lowest rate out of all UK regions.

The better track record in the US is no accident. Two policy interventions in particular are worthy of mention.

First is a network of state-backed women’s business centres. Since it was established in 1979, the US Small Business Administration’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership has fostered the participation of women entrepreneurs in the economy, especially those who have been historically underserved. On a visit to Boston in January, I visited a women’s business centre to understand the programmes they have on offer and how they run. Courses are run in English and Spanish to cater for the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs, Hispanic women. In contrast, some of the excellent infrastructure we had in the UK, through RDA-backed programmes and business links, are slowly diminishing.

Second, the US government has decided that five per cent of federal contracting dollars  must be awarded to women-owned small businesses. Federal contracts may also be set aside for women-owned small businesses in industries where women are under-represented. Companies bidding for government contracts are now seeking women-led enterprises to be their suppliers. It is not about greater spending, but about incentives to change a culture.

This contrasts with the coalition’s record. In February the government’s paper on ‘buying and managing government goods’ stated that its goal of 25 per cent of central government spending to go to SMEs, but there was no goal for supporting female-led SMEs. While women at the top of large businesses has been the focus of much attention of late, we need to make concerted efforts to close the gender gap in entrepreneurship. If the government does not act, Labour in power must.

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Seema Malhotra is MP for Feltham and Heston

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Photo: Stefan 1981

Thinktanks are in close competition for column inches and resources, but the event also highlighted the increased opportunity for cooperation between tanks, not least through the fast-moving medium of Twitter which can act as an echo chamber for one’s research like no other. And given the nature of the discussion, the chair of the event urged all attendees – not – to turn off their mobile phones, but instead to tweet and Facebook away. The appropriately chosen hashtag #wonkcomms was soon trending in the capital and then, later, also in the UK. For the digitally inclined, readers can find out more at wonkcomms.net and stay update by following @WonkComms on Twitter.

In other news, Compass caused a stir by asking ‘What if Labour wins?’ Its report, Future Shock: Governing as One Nation Labour, was bleak, if realistic, in its conclusion that ‘Labour in power could rapidly face a series of political battles that render it isolated and weakened. This would provoke internal disunity and reawaken old arguments about the party’s purpose and direction. Labour cannot overcome its opponents alone and needs to reach out to allies both within the UK and beyond.’ It is correct in its warning that Ed Miliband needs to secure a ‘clear electoral mandate’ in order to govern successfully, something which Progress’ own Campaign for a Labour Majority seeks to achieve. Compass remains, however, much more open to collaboration with the Liberal Democrats, unsurprising since its move in 2011 to allow Greens, Liberal Democrats and others to join it. Future Shock recommends that ‘the shadow cabinet should avoid opportunistic sniping at Liberal Democrats’ and that ‘Labour should be mindful of the fact that some Liberal Democrat MPs entered the coalition with the Tories because they felt the Labour party was not willing to work in partnership with them.’ Whether the fault lies at Labour’s door is debatable, but in anticipation of 2015 general election Compass wishes to see the party ‘emulate the pre-election contacts that took place prior to 1997 between Robin Cook and Robert Maclennan’ in preparation for an eventuality whereby the party does not gain a parliamentary majority.

Elsewhere, Compass and Progress jointly hosted an event with the Labour party policy review, New or Blue, Radical or Conservative? as part of an event series entitled One Nation Labour Modernisation. Times columnist and former chief speechwriter to Tony Blair, Philip Collins, and blue Labour guru, Maurice Glasman went head to head. Choice quotes from each include Collins opening by explaining how he is ‘always critical of people in leftwing seminars for their torrent of abstract nouns’, and his critique of the Labour’s chosen defining motif: ‘I like One Nation. I think it’s exactly the right number of nations’, he declared. Glasman defended blue Labour’s central conception of the ‘common good’ which Collins called into question, but prefaced the main thrust of his speech by lambasting the ‘bullying Brezhnevite tactics’ that he had witnessed of late being used to ‘silence Progress’ and expressed his ‘solidarity’. Visit compassonline.org.uk to listen to the debate in full and do not forget to sign up to the next event in the series on 14 May with Andrew Adonis, chair of Progress, and Hilary Wainwright, fellow of the Transnational Institute and founding editor of Red Pepper magazine.

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Photo: Patrick Hoesly

Most accept it as simply the ‘way things are’, but I would think many have never really considered what it means to enlist 16 and 17 year olds and if the needs of the military really justify this position.

It is correct that children do not take part in armed conflict until they are 18 but we need to note that 16 year old recruits are overwhelmingly enlisted into combat roles, so as soon as they turn 18 they can be sent to the frontline.

The time has come to heed the advice of Child Soldiers International, the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, Unicef, the United Nations, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the defence committee and raise the lowest age of recruitment from 16 to 18.

There is no similar underage recruitment in other dangerous public service vocations, such as the fire or police service.

Young people under 18 are legally restricted from watching violent war films and playing video games – yet they can be trained to go to war.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has asked the government to:   ‘reconsider its active policy of recruitment of children into the armed forces and ensure that it does not occur in a manner which specifically targets ethnic minorities and children of low-income families’.

Our country has also been criticised by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, with them urging in 2009:  ‘the UK adopt a plan of action for implementing the Optional Protocol, including these recommendations, fully in the UK, together with a clear timetable for doing so.’

Despite these recommendations, no British government has yet carried out a feasibility study of an all-adult military. I wanted to know if the ministry of defence had an open mind on this – but it would appear not. From the debate it is clear they remain convinced that we should have children in the armed forces.

This commitment to duty is often made at 16, with no obligation to proactively reconfirm their enlistment once adulthood is reached and they can be deployed.

Teenagers are significantly less mature emotionally, psychologically and socially. And young people from deprived backgrounds, who I understand form the majority of underage recruits, are particularly vulnerable.

It can be no coincidence that recruits who sign up as minors suffer higher rates of alcoholism, self-harming and suicides than those who enlist as adults.

There are also issues of long-term social mobility and employability to consider. I had no doubt the minister would deploy the well worn argument that the defence department uses about giving young people employment and training opportunities, young people who may otherwise be unemployed and that they get training.

Others may argue that the armed forces provide for young people who may come from difficult home circumstances, from a background of suffering abuse or simply because they have been thrown out onto the streets.

I accept neither and when it come to the qualifications available to minors in the army data shows they do not include GCSEs, A or AS levels, BTECs, HNDs or HNCs and, while the minister disagreed, many leave with no transferrable skills at all.

Perhaps that is the reason we have a higher than average proportion of former military people who find themselves unemployed, homeless and even in prison.

As I argued during the bill committee nearly three years ago, the armed forces mustn’t be seen as some kind of escape route from abuse or even unemployment.

As a nation we need to develop the support and services young people need rather than holding up the Services as an easy option so early in life.

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Alex Cunningham is MP for Stockton North. He tweets @ACunninghamMP

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Photo: Defence Images

Nobody really wants a referendum on the European Union. The Eurosceptics don’t want a referendum; they want to leave, and that is unlikely to happen. The Europhiles don’t want a referendum; they want UKIP to pipe down, and that is not going to happen either. Ed Miliband doesn’t want a referendum, either, so, quite sensibly and rightly, he’s not calling for one.

There are many arguments for an in-out referendum, and all of them are silly. There is the ‘final settlement’: that a referendum on the European Union would end the debate. This is a similar delusion to the one that underpins the Govian history syllabus, which imposes ‘final settlements’ because you’ve got to have two dates on the exam paper. But the nature of life is that a settlement is something you have until someone else disagrees, which usually takes no longer than five minutes. Elizabeth I thought that she had reached a ‘final settlement’ in the relationship between the government and the individual, in 1559. There are many odd views about the relationship between the state and the self today, the vast majority of them in the Tory party, but you would have to travel pretty far and talk to some very strange people to find anyone who still thought that the Tudors had it right.

Then there is the tactical argument. Dan Hodges writes that if Labour called for a referendum before 2015, it would accelerate the Conservative meltdown and put Ed Miliband on the brink of Downing Street, while Owen Jones thinks that a European referendum would allow the next election to be fought on austerity, not the EU. Which ignores the fact that, if the next election is one about ‘growth versus austerity’, then Labour will lose. If the Conservatives spend the next two years talking about Europe, that will be two years they won’t have spent talking about welfare, tax and spend, or immigration. We’ve sufficiently imbibed the right’s propaganda that we think that 1979 was a foregone conclusion, but if Harold Wilson had gone to the polls after the 1975 referendum, Labour would probably have won a proper majority, and if James Callaghan had done so two years later, ‘Thatcherism’ would never have happened. The 1975 referendum might not have healed Labour’s Euro-wounds, but it did patch them up long enough for the party to look briefly battle-ready. Why do we want a battle-ready Conservative party?

But the biggest argument against it all is that it simply isn’t how governments should behave. It is perfectly possible to imagine a leftwing government that decided that EU membership was a bad thing. But isn’t possible to do is imagine a plausible and successful leftwing government that might leave the EU, but wasn’t sure one way or the other. The only type of government that does that is one that has ceased to really be about government at all, but instead kicks the can down the road in the hope that something might turn up. You know, like this one. Ed Miliband aspires to something better. He should stick to his guns.

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Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb

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Photo: Rock Cohen

As a football fan, I always prefer to keep politics and football separate. So I’ve really struggled with the appointment of Paolo di Canio at Sunderland. The news immediately caused a stir because of his fascist beliefs, his history of giving fascist salutes, and his deeply divisive view that Sunderland should revert to a 4-4-2 formation. In the past he has admitted to being an admirer of Benito Mussolini. While playing for Lazio he was fined for giving fascist salutes. Although, in his defence, he could have been appealing for offside. After the game. At a rally.

This is the first time that his past has really caused a significant problem for him in England. It begs the question of why the national media chose not to make a fuss when he was appointed manager of Swindon Town two years ago. One can only presume that as a nation we view fascism in the same vein as fox hunting. We don’t have a problem with it as long as it’s confined to parts of Wiltshire.

Sunderland is a Premier League club, for the time being, which is why it’s got more attention. Which I understand. But, if that’s that how society works, it does beg a question. If you can’t be a fascist and manage in the Premier League but you can be a fascist and manage in League One, what can you get away with in the Championship? Watching Top Gear? And if fascism is OK in League One what sort of monsters have we got managing in League Two? I’ll be listening out for announcements such as ‘The arrival of Robert Mugabe at Sixfields really has caused a stir here in Northampton, but they’re unbeaten in three, literally annihilating the opposition.’

Football hasn’t had a good few years in terms of headlines, and those who don’t love the game could easily believe that it is a moral blight on our nation, a cesspit of abuse and immorality that lowers the tone of our country. And that’s the main reason why I pay 50 quid to go every week. What some people, inside and outside of the game, struggle with is this: some abuse should absolutely be allowed in football grounds, reserved mainly but not exclusively for: anyone who dives. Anyone who plays for Derby County. Anyone abusing the ref. Anyone who plays for Manchester United. Anyone who has played for Derby County or Manchester United. Anyone who has ever left Nottingham Forest and done well. Anyone who has ever left Nottingham Forest and done badly. Anyone who supports Liverpool, Manchester United or Chelsea.

If di Canio makes fascist statements or salutes then he should be banned for life. But don’t tarnish all of football with him. Football has done more than any other sport on earth to break down barriers of race. In our own country it helped wrestle our own national flag back from the extremists. Thirty years ago if you flew a St George’s Cross outside your house people would think you were in the National Front. Today if you fly one, people just think you’re so drunk you don’t realise we’ve been knocked out of Euro 2012 yet.

To some extent, football is capable of regulating itself. Ultimately we should mock di Canio for his views. I’d love to hear John Motson say ‘Paolo di Canio’s arrival here has caused quite the stir, although ironically, given Adam Johnson’s form, what Sunderland actually need is a strong rightwinger.’

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Matt Forde is a stand-up comedian and talkSPORT presenter. He used to work for the Labour party www.mattforde.com

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Photo: Hilton Teper