Prince William showed Keir Starmer how a real fan celebrates

Consider these two tweets from famous fans on the biggest sporting stories of the week. 

‘Amazing night…special shout out to Boubacar Kamara who has been out injured but is such an integral part of our team and helped lay the foundations of this success.’ 

‘UTV! VTID’

And ‘22 long years for the Arsenal. But finally, we’re back where we belong. Champions!’

Now, if you had to guess which one of these posts came from a fan who started supporting the club as a poor working class child, who has a season ticket and is bringing up his kids to back the club, following them home and away, you might assume he’d be the one backing Aston Villa. 

Likewise, if you had to deduce which tweet came from a man born into a life of unimaginable wealth and privilege, who only chose his team to stand out from the mates at a £45,000 a year private school who all supported Chelsea, and whose net worth is somewhere north of £100 million, you might surmise that was the Arsenal fan. 

You’d be wrong on both counts.

Because last night Prince William sent that fulsome, emotional, genuine praise to his Aston Villa heroes after he’d watched them win the Europa League with a 3-0 victory over German side Freiburg. 

Whereas on Tuesday, Keir Starmer, a lifelong Gooner, sent that rather stilted, clipped, by-the-numbers tribute to Arsenal after Man City’s draw with Bournemouth meant his side won their first Premier League trophy since 2004. 

And the past few days have been just two of a number of incidents in which the son of a King has shown the son of a toolmaker how things are done when it comes to being a famous fan of a football team. 

As footage showed Prince William jumping for joy in Istanbul, ignoring ‘no touching’ royal protocol to hug his fellow fans and looking for all the world like any other supporter, I couldn’t help but contrast his fandom with that of the beleaguered Prime Minister. 

It’s trivial of course, and there are far more pressing issues, but that kind of keening insincerity that makes Starmer sound like a robot when discussing his undeniable love for the game is arguably one of the reasons he’s struggled to cut through a British public that, according to polling, ranks him even lower than Liz Truss. 

Football fandom is a complicated thing, but there’s something about the spontaneous outpouring of happiness from William that meant even those, like me, deeply cynical about the Royal Family, couldn’t help but raise a smile. 

Whether that cynicism leads you to eventually conclude that William has been simply advised to embrace football to win over his future subjects, or that he’s merely acting, is immaterial. 

The fact is, he looks and sounds like a football fan. 

Starmer, for his part, is so afraid of offending anyone by saying anything interesting that he ends up offending everyone. 

For what it’s worth, I don’t actually doubt his sincerity. I’m often reminded of a tweet, following a particularly cringey Starmer post about Gareth Bale at the 2022 World Cup, from a Labour activist.

He said ‘it is a great bit that Keir Starmer, a man who genuinely loves football, manages whenever he posts about the sport to come across like he had never heard of it before reading the Wikipedia page this morning.’

It is in stark, and for the Prime Minister, painful contrast to William, and a reminder that if you look out of touch on any subject compared to a literal Prince, that might be part of the reason why 100 of your colleagues want you ‘sacked in the morning.’

And it’s not just this week. 

Take the Prince of Wales’ brilliantly received pre-match interview with TNT last year ahead of Villa’s Champions League quarter final with PSG, bantering with Rio Ferdinand and Ally McCoist, and waxing lyrical about the tactical challenge of navigating a high press. 

And compare that to Keir Starmer’s 2022 appearance on the ‘Football Cliches’ podcast. 

For the uninitiated, that’s a show that could not be more niche, it is for the absolute anaroks, when the fine details, quirks, and minutiae of football are praised and every bit of punditry dissected.

Given the chance to show himself as a real football fan on this forum, Keir Starmer said that his favourite thing about the game was ‘goals’. 

I reckon Prince William’s youngest son Louis, who is 8, could have come up with a more niche answer than that, never mind the heir himself. 

It’s no secret that public figures try to use sport to get some of the rub from top stars, and, whether authentic or not, William is reaping the benefits. 

Videos of him celebrating are going viral, and Villa players are praising him for joining their post-match party for a beer. 

You can hardly picture a bleary-eyed Bukayo Saka at 5am giving a shout out to Keir Starmer as he makes his way back from toasting the title win. 

The Prime Minister’s lack of authenticity bleeds into his every decision, paralyses him from showing any personality, and exposes the hollowness at the heart of his political operation. 

In trying to be serious, Stamer comes across not as bland, but as cold and calculating. 

Like the time he, presumably scared of appearing too cultured or fearful, said he didn’t have a favourite poem, had no phobias even as a child, and doesn’t even dream. 

Or the time he was pressed on his favourite film, and instead talked about how much he loved The Traitors (which is brilliant, of course, but quite obviously not a film). 

It is that kind of panic at rocking the boat that led this fan to once celebrate a late Arsenal goal by tweeting ‘right in the 86th minute’ – a collection of words no supporter has ever used, and even ChatGPT would probably sniff out as insincere. 

No one is asking Starmer to pretend to be a more passionate fan than he is, or to try and one-up Prince William in the ‘limbs’ stakes. But we like our politicians to be authentic.  

Ed Miliband’s Lazarene comeback from bacon-bothering national joke to borderline national treasure status was boosted by his embracing of his inner geek, and he never seemed more real to me than when he stayed up until 4am livetweeting the World Series, as he’s a huge Boston Red Sox fan. 

Baseball’s not my game (nor that of many people in the UK) but it’s far preferable to a politician trying and failing, like David Cameron getting Villa and West Ham mixed up, or more recently, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, saying he wanted ‘one’ of the Glasgow teams to win  – seemingly ignorant that the Old Firm don’t do much equivocating. 

The frustrating thing is, unlike Cameron or Sarwar, Starmer doesn’t have to pretend to be a passionate football fan. He is one. 

But his entire cynical approach to politics means that he can’t show it. And that is to his detriment. Much like the policies Starmer jettisoned when they became inconvenient, no one would have trouble believing that he would suddenly back Tottenham if he thought it would keep him in Downing Street a few months longer. 

And whatever you think about Prince William, no-one expects to see him celebrating with Tom Brady at a Birmingham City game. 

Yet again, the Prime Minister was shown up by the heir to the throne. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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