Abstract
This article
examines Janan Ganesh’s recent Financial Times column, “The Man City theory of
politics,” as an ideological artefact of late‑capitalist political commentary.
Ganesh’s argument that contemporary political allegiance is best understood
through the lens of football fandom exemplifies a broader trend within liberal‑bourgeois
discourse: the displacement of structural analysis by psychological and
cultural metaphors. By situating Ganesh’s intervention within the political
economy of financialised sport, the transformation of social‑democratic
parties, and the long history of “tribalism” as an explanatory device, this
article argues that such frameworks function to obscure the class dynamics of
political disaffection. The piece concludes by situating current mass movements
within a Marxist theory of consciousness and crisis.
The
ideological function of sporting metaphors
Sporting
metaphors in political commentary are not new. Ganesh’s column distinguishes
itself by claiming that football fandom provides the primary model for
understanding political behaviour in the early twenty‑first century. He
suggests voters behave like supporters: motivated by identity rather than
argument, impervious to evidence, and loyal to their “side” regardless of its
conduct. The argument is presented with the stylistic fluency characteristic of
Ganesh’s work, but its political function is more significant than its
rhetorical polish. It exemplifies a recurring tendency within the liberal
commentariat: interpreting political alienation as a failure of mass
rationality rather than a product of structural crisis.
This displacement
from political economy to psychology is a hallmark of bourgeois ideology in
periods of systemic instability. It allows commentators to maintain the fiction
of a fundamentally rational social order while pathologising those who reject
it. In this respect, Ganesh’s intervention belongs to a long lineage of liberal
sociological explanation, one that treats political disaffection as a cognitive
or cultural deficiency rather than as a rational response to deteriorating material
conditions. The football terrace metaphor is simply the latest iteration of
this ideological manoeuvre.
The
analytical problem with such frameworks is not merely their superficiality but
their systematic exclusion of the structural determinants of political
behaviour. Treating voters as football fans brackets out the economic
transformations that have reshaped political consciousness over the last four
decades: stagnant real wages, the erosion of social provision, the transfer of
vast public resources to the financial sector, and the militarisation of state budgets.
These developments are not incidental background conditions but the central
forces driving political realignment. The “tribalism” thesis functions by
rendering them invisible.
Moreover,
the sporting metaphor obscures the class character of political institutions
themselves. Football fandom is presented as spontaneous, irrational loyalty,
but the modern elite game, particularly at Manchester City, is a product of
financialisation, oligarchic ownership, and global capital flows. The analogy
thus collapses under its own weight. If voters behave like football supporters,
then the political parties they support increasingly resemble the clubs they
are asked to identify with: hollowed‑out brands owned and operated by forces
entirely external to the communities they claim to represent. The metaphor
inadvertently reveals more than Ganesh intends.
From a
Marxist perspective, the appeal to “tribalism” is best understood as an
ideological response to the crisis of bourgeois hegemony. As Antonio Gramsci
observed, ruling classes confronted with declining legitimacy often resort to
cultural or psychological explanations for political instability. These
explanations naturalise the existing order by depicting dissent as irrational,
emotional, or pre‑political. They also delegitimise alternative political
movements by framing them as expressions of identity rather than responses to
objective conditions.
The problem
with Ganesh’s argument is therefore not simply that it is empirically thin, but
that it reproduces a conceptual framework designed to foreclose structural
analysis. It treats political behaviour as affective attachment rather than a
historically conditioned response to crisis. In doing so, it reinforces the
Financial Times' ideological position: that the political order remains
fundamentally sound, and that the challenge lies in managing the electorate's
irrational impulses.
A more
adequate analysis would start from the opposite premise: that material
conditions shape political consciousness, and that the erosion of traditional
party loyalties reflects the breakdown of the post‑Cold War political
settlement. Workers are not becoming more tribal; they are confronting a
political system that no longer offers them meaningful representation. We must
understand the rise of new political formations, whether reactionary or
progressive, in this context.
Ganesh’s
column thus serves as a symptomatic text. It reveals the anxieties of a ruling
class confronted with the disintegration of its ideological authority, and it
deploys the familiar tools of liberal commentary to explain that disintegration
away. The sporting metaphor is not an innocent flourish. It is an ideological
device that substitutes psychology for political economy, sentiment for
structure, and pathology for critique.
Manchester
City and the political economy of elite sport
Ganesh’s
choice of Manchester City is analytically revealing. Since the Abu Dhabi ruling
family acquired the club in 2008, Manchester City has become a paradigmatic
example of the financialisation of elite sport. It functions simultaneously as
a prestige asset, a node within a global sovereign‑wealth network, and the
flagship of City Football Group’s multinational portfolio. Its competitive
success cannot be separated from football's structural transformation into a
globalised entertainment commodity. Several interlocking processes characterise
this transformation: the inflation of transfer markets to levels unimaginable
even two decades ago; the systematic pricing‑out of traditional working‑class
supporters who once constituted the social base of the sport; the conversion of
clubs into vehicles for oligarchic, private‑equity and state capital; and the
juridification of competition through increasingly complex financial
regulations, arbitration procedures and litigation. Manchester City is not
merely an illustrative case but a concentrated expression of these tendencies.
This example
matters not only for what it reveals about football but also for the parallel
it exposes with developments in the political sphere. Over the same period, the
historic parties of the capitalist class- Labour in Britain, the Democratic
Party in the United States, Germany’s SPD, and France’s Socialist Party-
underwent their own form of financialisation. They retained their traditional
symbols, organisational shells and rhetorical markers, but abandoned the
reformist programmes that once linked them to sections of the working class.
Banks, the military-intelligence apparatus, and the transnational corporate
elite effectively took ownership. The parties continued to present themselves
as vehicles of popular representation, but their internal structures, policy
agendas, and funding networks increasingly reflected capital's interests rather
than labour's.
The parallel
between football clubs and political parties is precise. Both have been
hollowed out, repurposed and rebranded. Both rely on maintaining sentimental
loyalties among their respective publics, supporters in one case, voters in the
other, while no longer representing the material interests of those
constituencies. In both domains, the outward continuity of symbols masks a
profound transformation of ownership, purpose and class function. The modern
football club and the modern centre‑left party are institutions whose
legitimacy depends on identities rendered historically obsolete by structural
change.
From an
academic perspective, this parallel invites a broader reflection on the
political economy of representation under late capitalism. The financialisation
of football is not an isolated cultural phenomenon but part of a wider process
in which previously embedded social institutions are transformed into assets
within global circuits of capital. The same logic applies to political parties,
which have shifted from mass organisations rooted in specific class
constituencies to professionalised entities integrated into state and corporate
networks. The erosion of democratic participation, declining party membership,
and the rise of technocratic governance are not merely political trends but
symptoms of this deeper structural reconfiguration.
Ganesh’s
invocation of Manchester City thus inadvertently illuminates the very dynamics
his column seeks to obscure. By framing political allegiance as irrational
fandom, he shifts attention away from the structural processes that have
hollowed out political institutions and generated widespread disaffection. The
football metaphor, intended as a critique of voter behaviour, instead becomes a
revealing analogy for the transformation of political parties themselves. The
problem is not that voters behave like supporters, but that the institutions
they are asked to support have been reconstructed along lines analogous to
those of elite sport: commodified, financialised and detached from the
communities they once served.
In this
sense, the sporting metaphor is not merely inadequate but symptomatic. It
reflects an ideological tendency within liberal commentary to interpret
political crisis through cultural or psychological categories rather than
through the material dynamics of capitalist restructuring. The hollowing out of
football clubs and political parties alike is not a matter of identity or
sentiment but of ownership, class power, and the global reorganisation of
capital.
The
“tribalism” thesis in liberal political sociology
The notion
that voters behave tribally has a long pedigree in liberal political sociology.
It appears in discussions of “low‑information voters,” “left‑behind
communities,” and Hillary Clinton’s now‑canonical phrase “basket of
deplorables.” In each case, the explanatory burden falls on the electorate's
cognitive or cultural deficiencies rather than on the structural conditions
that shape political behaviour. The electorate is imagined as fragmented into
affective blocs, driven by identity, resentment, or irrational loyalty, and
therefore incapable of responding to political arguments rationally or
deliberatively. This interpretive framework has become increasingly prominent
in commentary over the last decade, serving as a convenient shorthand for
explaining political volatility without confronting the deeper social
transformations that underlie it.
What this
framework systematically excludes is the material history of the past four
decades. Since the late 1970s, the political economy of advanced capitalist
societies has changed profoundly. Stagnant real wages have become a defining
feature of working-class life across the OECD: productivity growth has
decoupled from wage growth, while labour’s share of national income has
declined. The promise of rising living standards that underpinned the post-war
settlement has broken down, giving way to precarious employment, insecure
housing, and declining social mobility.
At the same
time, trillions have flowed to the financial oligarchy through bank bailouts,
quantitative easing and other extraordinary interventions. Though justified as
necessary to stabilise the financial system, these policies have inflated asset
prices, enriched capital holders and widened inequality. The political
consequences of this redistribution have been profound: a growing sense that
the state primarily protects financial interests and that democratic
institutions are structurally incapable of representing the majority.
Austerity
has also shaped the period, an agenda Ganesh himself defended in his biography
of George Osborne. Austerity has brought deep cuts to public services, welfare
provision and local government budgets, with working-class communities bearing
a disproportionate share of the impact. It has weakened social infrastructure,
from libraries and youth centres to hospitals and schools. The political
effects of austerity cannot be reduced to tribalism; they stem from the lived
experience of social decline and institutional abandonment.
Alongside
these developments, entire regions, including Manchester and its surrounding
areas, have been deindustrialised. The closure of factories, mines and
steelworks has not only destroyed jobs but also dismantled the social and
cultural institutions that sustained working-class life. The resulting
landscape of unemployment, underemployment and economic stagnation has produced
political disaffection that is rational, historically grounded and structurally
determined.
Finally,
over the past two decades, state budgets have become increasingly militarised,
with vast sums spent on war, defence procurement, and security apparatuses even
as public services collapse. Prioritising military spending over social
investment reflects a broader shift in state strategy: strengthening coercive
capacities at the expense of welfare functions. This shift has political
consequences that cannot be reduced to identity or affect; it reflects the
reorientation of state power amid capitalist crisis.
To interpret
political disaffection as “tribalism” is therefore to deny the rationality of
working‑class responses to these conditions. It is an ideological manoeuvre
that absolves the ruling class of responsibility for the crisis it has
produced. By framing political behaviour as irrational, commentators can avoid
confronting the structural determinants of disaffection: the erosion of living
standards, the collapse of social infrastructure, the concentration of wealth,
and the militarisation of state power. The tribalism thesis functions as
ideological displacement, shifting attention from political economy to
psychology and from class relations to cultural identity.
From a
Marxist perspective, this displacement itself signals a deeper crisis of
bourgeois hegemony. When the material foundations of political legitimacy
erode, ruling‑class ideology increasingly relies on cultural and psychological
explanations to account for political instability. The electorate is
pathologised because acknowledging the rationality of its disaffection would
require confronting the social order's failures. The tribalism thesis thus naturalises
the existing system by depicting dissent as irrational, emotional, or pre‑political.
In this
sense, the appeal to tribalism is not merely analytically inadequate but
politically functional. It reinforces the liberal commentariat's ideological
position by framing political crisis as a problem of voter psychology rather
than capitalist restructuring. It protects the ruling class's legitimacy while
delegitimising the working class's grievances.
The
commentator’s vantage point: distance as ideology
Ganesh’s
column adopts the stance of the detached observer, a position he has cultivated
throughout his career. He describes his ideal reader as someone who watches
politics from a calm distance, like a naturalist observing animal behaviour.
This self‑presentation is central to his authority at the Financial Times: a
cultivated impression of disinterested sophistication, a commentator who stands
above the fray and surveys political conflict with anthropological curiosity.
The football metaphor reinforces this posture. In Ganesh’s framing, the
commentator sits in the directors’ box, insulated from the passions of the crowd
below, able to interpret their behaviour precisely because he does not share
it. The terrace becomes a site of irrational collective emotion, while the
hospitality suite becomes a vantage point of clarity, reason and detachment.
Yet this
stance is itself ideological. The claim to neutrality, distance, and dispassion
describes not Ganesh’s position but a rhetorical device that conceals its
political content. Ganesh is not a neutral spectator. He is a partisan of the
City of London, the transatlantic financial order and the NATO‑aligned “rules‑based”
international system. His columns consistently defend the institutional
architecture of contemporary capitalism: fiscal orthodoxy, Atlanticist foreign
policy, technocratic governance and the primacy of financial markets. His
prose's apparent detachment is therefore not a withdrawal from politics but a
mode of political intervention. It lets him present the ruling class's
interests as the natural horizon of political reason.
The
Financial Times itself embodies this ideological position. Its editorial line
has been unwavering in its support for austerity, its defence of militarism and
its hostility to strikes. It frames these positions not as expressions of
partisan loyalty but as reflections of economic necessity, geopolitical
realism, or institutional responsibility. The FT’s own tribalism- its alignment
with the priorities of finance capital and Western strategic power- is never
described as such because it is the tribalism of the ruling class. Bourgeois
ideology naturalises its own commitments while pathologising those of the
masses.
This dynamic
is central to understanding Ganesh’s use of the football metaphor. By depicting
voters as supporters driven by irrational loyalty, he implicitly contrasts
their behaviour with the rationality of elite institutions. The passions of the
terrace are juxtaposed with the calm deliberation of the directors’ box. But
this contrast is misleading. The ruling class is no less tribal than the
masses; it expresses its loyalties through different institutional forms. The
commitment to fiscal austerity, for example, is not the product of
dispassionate analysis but of an ideological attachment to capital's interests.
Support for NATO’s strategic posture is not a neutral assessment of global
security but reflects Western elites' geopolitical commitments. The hostility
to strikes is not an objective evaluation of economic efficiency but an
expression of class interest.
Ganesh’s
ideological function becomes clearer when situated within the broader context
of liberal political commentary. The claim to neutrality is a hallmark of
bourgeois journalism, which presents its own class position as universal
reason. This rhetorical strategy lets commentators delegitimise alternative
political perspectives by framing them as irrational, emotional, or tribal. The
working class is depicted as driven by identity, resentment or affect, while
the ruling class is portrayed as guided by expertise, moderation and
rationality. This asymmetry is not accidental; it is a structural feature of
bourgeois ideology.
From a
Marxist perspective, the problem is not merely that Ganesh misrepresents voter
behaviour but that he misrepresents his own. The detachment he claims is
ideological camouflage. It conceals the fact that his analysis is shaped by the
interests and worldview of the class fraction he represents. The directors’ box
is not a neutral vantage point; it is a site of power. The calm distance he
celebrates is not a methodological virtue but a political position.
In this
sense, the football metaphor is doubly revealing. It exposes the contempt with
which sections of the liberal commentariat view the electorate, and it
inadvertently reveals the tribalism of the ruling class itself. The passions of
the terrace are pathologised, while the commitments of the boardroom are
naturalised. The ideological work of Ganesh’s column lies precisely in this
inversion.
Consciousness,
crisis and the Marxist perspective
Marxism does
not deny that identity, habit and emotion shape political consciousness. These
elements form part of what Marx called the “ideological superstructure,” the
ensemble of cultural and psychological forms through which individuals
interpret their social world. But, as Trotsky emphasised, consciousness lags
behind objective conditions and is then propelled forward by them, often
violently. Political loyalties that appear stable or even innate are, in fact,
historically conditioned. They reflect past stages of development and can shift
rapidly when the underlying material relations change. The loyalties Ganesh
treats as permanent features of human nature- tribal attachments, affective
identifications, irrational solidarities- are not anthropological constants.
They are historically specific and subject to abrupt reconfiguration under
conditions of crisis.
This dynamic
is visible in the mass movements that have emerged across Britain, Europe and
the United States in recent years. The wave of strikes that has swept through
transport, education, health care, logistics and manufacturing is not a tribal
phenomenon. It is a rational, collective response to decades of wage
suppression, deteriorating working conditions, and intensifying exploitation.
Workers who may differ in nationality, race, religion or cultural identity,
including football allegiance, have found common cause in struggles over pay,
conditions and the defence of public services. These movements cut across the
divisions the ruling class works so hard to maintain. They demonstrate that
class solidarity is not an abstract ideal but an objective tendency rooted in
shared material interests.
The same
holds for the anti‑war demonstrations that have filled city centres from London
to Berlin to New York. These mobilisations are not expressions of irrational
emotion or tribal identity. They are grounded in a clear understanding of
militarism's consequences: diverting resources from social needs, escalating
geopolitical conflict, and the human cost borne overwhelmingly by ordinary
people. The breadth of these protests, drawing participants from diverse
backgrounds and political traditions, reveals an emerging collective
consciousness that transcends the narrow identities commentators like Ganesh
invoke.
In both
cases, what is taking shape is not tribalism but the early stages of a
politically coherent response to systemic breakdown. As objective conditions
deteriorate, consciousness is forced to catch up. The forms of loyalty that
once anchored individuals to existing institutions- political parties, national
myths, cultural identities- are eroding. In their place, new solidarities are
emerging, grounded not in sentiment but in the shared experience of crisis.
These movements represent the working class's rational, collective agency in
confronting a social order that can no longer meet its needs.
Conclusion:
Beyond the terrace metaphor
The task is
not to lament voters’ irrationality, as Ganesh and the Financial Times
do, but to articulate the rational content of working‑class disaffection. The
political crisis confronting the advanced capitalist states is not the product
of tribal psychology, nor of some sudden collapse in civic virtue. It results
from a social order that offers the majority no future. When commentators
reduce political volatility to identity, affect or irrational loyalty, they
obscure the material foundations of discontent and transform a structurally
generated crisis into a behavioural problem. This ideological manoeuvre
protects the ruling class's legitimacy by locating the source of instability in
the electorate rather than in capitalism’s own contradictions.
A Marxist
analysis begins from the opposite premise: that political consciousness,
however uneven or contradictory, contains within it a rational core shaped by
lived experience. Workers’ instinctive opposition to austerity, militarism,
inequality and the degradation of public services is not a failure of reason
but an expression of it. The challenge is not to correct an irrational
electorate but to clarify and develop the rational content of its disaffection.
Consciousness lags behind objective conditions, as Trotsky observed, but crisis
propels it forward. The erosion of traditional party loyalties, the collapse of
trust in institutions, and the search for alternatives, however inchoate, are
symptoms of a deeper process in which the old ideological anchors are losing
their grip.
For this
reason, the central political task is not to defend the existing order against
“tribalism” but to provide a coherent alternative to it. Workers' spontaneous
opposition must be given a conscious, internationalist, socialist programme that
links immediate struggles to the broader transformation of society. Such a
programme must reject all forms of nationalism, identity‑based fragmentation
and class collaboration. It must address the structural roots of crisis: the
domination of finance capital, the militarisation of state policy, and the
systematic erosion of democratic and social rights.
Therefore,
we need a party independent of all factions of the capitalist class, whatever
shirts they wear. Only an organisation grounded in the interests of the
international working class can transform disaffection into political agency.
The crisis of capitalism has stripped away the illusions that once sustained
the old parties. The task now is to build the leadership capable of turning
opposition into a conscious movement for socialist reconstruction.
Further
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