A Prime Minister has discovered that the weather forecast is negotiable if you have enough national authority and absolutely no sense of proportion. FIFA wanted to move the Mexico-England match six hours earlier due to thunderstorms. The PM intervened. The match stayed at its original time. The thunderstorms, presumably, were informed of this decision and complied.
The logic here is extraordinary: a meteorological event that does not care about diplomatic channels was treated like a trade dispute. Somewhere in Whitehall, someone convinced the PM that rescheduling a football match because of rain would constitute a loss of face. Not a loss of comfort. Not a loss of convenience. A loss of face, to Mexico, over the timing of a sporting event during a weather system.
What actually happened is that FIFA blinked first. Whether because of political pressure or because the PM’s office flooded their email with increasingly unhinged correspondence about English sovereignty and atmospheric conditions remains unclear. The match proceeded at the original kick-off time. The thunderstorms came anyway, as thunderstorms do. Players got wet. Viewers watched wet players.
No national institution was consulted on whether this was a good use of executive authority. No meteorologist was asked if the forecast might change. The decision was made at the level where someone believed that a football match’s scheduling represented a meaningful assertion of national will. It did not. It represented a Prime Minister with a free afternoon and opinions about clouds.