‘Harry Kane scores and England remembers who it truly is – and the far proper will hate each second of it’

“England’s win over DR Congo showed that, beneath the poison spread by those who profit from division, Britain remains a country capable of standing together when it remembers what it shares”

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There are times when football feels like an escape. Then there are times when it feels like evidence. England’s dramatic win over DR Congo in Atlanta last night was one of those moments.

Not simply evidence that Harry Kane remains the man this country turns to when the nation’s nerves begin to shred, and hope starts crawling behind the sofa. Evidence of something deeper. Something Britain badly needs to see after years in which too many people have looked at their neighbours with suspicion rather than solidarity.

The pictures from the World Cup, from the pubs and the fan zones, tell the story better than any speech could. In Atlanta, England fans from all walks of life stood together, wrapped in the same flag, singing the same songs, suffering the same familiar agony.

Back home, pubs, fan zones and living rooms carried the same feelings. People of different backgrounds, beliefs, races, ages and communities, families whose roots stretch back generations and families whose stories began elsewhere, all staring at the same screens and willing the Three Lions through.

And what made it more powerful was when England was losing.

Before Kane struck his equaliser, before the roar, there was tension. DR Congo had rattled England and sent a tremor through every pub, living room and stadium seat where this country’s fragile footballing heart was already doing overtime.

Yet even then, people were together. They groaned together, shouted together, and hoped together. That is what the merchants of division never understand. Unity is not only found in celebration. It is found in shared anxiety, patience and belief when everything is wobbling.

It is found in the fan gripping their pint too tightly beside someone he has never met. It is found in people who may disagree about almost everything, still knowing, somewhere deep down, that they belong to the same story. Then Kane scored his second, and the country came up for air.

The goal put England into the next round, but it did more than that. It gave a glimpse of the Britain that still exists beneath the toxicity and division sown by their warped views. It should make those hellbent on dividing us deeply uncomfortable. Because their entire business depends on persuading people that Britain is already lost.

Reform UK, Restore, Raise the Colours and the hard-right voices that orbit them need the country to feel broken. They need people to believe that the stranger is a threat, that difference is danger, and that national pride can belong only to a narrow few. They dress it up as patriotism, but it is not love of country. It is fear wearing a flag.

The far right does not build anything other than division. They point, sneer and blame. They tell struggling workers that others have taken their jobs, that they are the reason their lives are harder. They take real anger over housing and neglected towns, then redirect it away from power and towards communities with less of it. It is not courage. It is cowardice with a megaphone.

People are angry because life has become difficult for too many. Pay packets do not stretch far enough. Public services are under pressure. Families feel insecure. That frustration is real and deserves serious answers.

But the agitators have never been interested in serious answers. They turn every pressure on life into a culture war. It takes local worry and inflames it until people are encouraged to see others as enemies. It talks about unity while profiting from division.

And this World Cup has shone a light on that fraud.

Because if Britain were truly the broken, hostile, hopelessly divided country they describe, such scenes would not exist. The stadium in Atlanta would not have looked like a place of unity. The pubs would not have sounded as they did. The roar after Kane’s goals would not have travelled across accents, generations, postcodes and communities.

So the painful question is why we need football to remind us of this at all.

It should not take a tournament thousands of miles away, in one of the most divided countries on the planet, to make us feel united. Why should the warmth that fills a pub when England score feel so absent from the rest of our public life?

We have allowed too many loud voices to make national life feel smaller, colder and meaner than it really is. We have allowed people who profit from resentment to present themselves as the guardians of belonging, when all they really guard is the boundary of who they think should be excluded and the money it makes them.

Football does not solve poverty. It does not fix the NHS, cut bills, build homes or repair schools. But sport can reveal something powerful. It shows us who we are when the poison is turned down, and the volume of ordinary people is turned up.

England’s win showed a country bruised by division but not beaten by it. Even when the team were behind, people stood together. When Kane scored, we rose together. When the whistle went, we celebrated together. That is the Britain we are and the one worth fighting for. And if those who profit from division did not like what they saw, that is their problem.

The rest of us see something better.