The government’s deregulation agenda would be bad for the football pyramid

I have been invited to speak on Monday evening on a panel about ethics in football and, specifically, the Owners and Directors Test: in short, how we get the “right” type of owners into the game. The mini-budget announcement last week by the government has made me think tangentially about this issue and what place regulation has in football.

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have been nothing but clear about what they stand for – we are in an era of deregulation, tax cuts and growth at all costs. I understand the logic of trying to get the economy growing and using the resulting income from taxation for societal investment. The problem is this is an amplification of the existing model of the past 50 years of capitalism where we have been concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer people. The UK Gini Index, which measures inequality, has risen steadily since 1977, from 25% to 36.3%, and a House of Commons Library study shows that, globally, the top 1% of earners are on track to control approximately 64% of global wealth by 2030. Both are corrosive for our democracy and a sense of fairness. In society relative inequality matters not just on a moral level but because it creates political instability. We have doubled down on that in the past week.

The current ideological shift towards deregulation would also be a disaster for the English Football League and broader football pyramid. In 2021 the diagnosis and recommendations set out by Tracey Crouch in the Fan Led Review were crystal clear; free market ideology and untethered globalisation puts the national game at risk and devalues the communities that clubs are rooted in. While at an aggregate level the game is increasing its global reach and wealth, it is creating market