Thank God Dominic Raab is here – we might never have known the real reason Colin Kaepernick took a knee

Black Lives Matter has only been the leading global story for weeks. You can’t expect him to be as well informed as footballers and almost everyone else in the world already

When a vast layer of society feels deep distrust for authority, as many have done since the death of George Floyd, it’s essential the government of the day can convey how they understand the people’s fears and have listened and respected the movement they created.

So it’s marvellous that Dominic Raab said “Taking a knee? That’s off Game of Thrones innit?” in his recent talkRADIO interview.

While anyone vaguely human pondered the enormity of Premier League footballers “taking the knee” after the kick-off, only Raab had the foresight to think: “Oh, they’re re-enacting the pledge of loyalty to the King of Westeros.”

Maybe he thought: “Instead of a ball I expect they’ll get chased by a dragon, and I won’t get too excited if Aston Villa murder the Sheffield United goalkeeper with an axe, as it might be disallowed by VAR if one of the horsemen was offside.”

When he sees civil rights protestors laying in front of lines of police in Chicago, he must think, “ah, they’re lining up to be tickled like in Fifty Shades of Grey.”

If he sees footage of black athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympics, giving the black power salute, Raab must think, ”I expect they were copying a gesture from Homes Under the Hammer, when a couple from Stockport punched the air as they bought a derelict garage.”

Luckily, the sign he’s mistaken as a scene from Game of Thrones, is only the global gesture of the Black Lives Matter movement, historically symbolic since Colin Kaepernick took a knee in protest against racism and police brutality in 2016, so it’s not as if it’s sensitive or important in any way.

Raab also said he would only “take the knee” for his wife or the Queen. So hopefully the next time he kneels for the Queen, she’ll say, ”I don’t have time to watch you re-enact Game of Thrones, you silly arse,” and have him thrown out of the palace.

He also said the gesture was a symbol of subordination, so hopefully, black people around the world will take notice. Because if black people in cities where the police are violently racist have made a mistake, it’s that they haven’t asked Raab to come up with their symbols. It’s strange that they look to rappers, sports stars, writers and activists as their role models when you only have to look at Dominic “Public Enemy” Raab, to see he’s the man to choose which gestures they should use.

You can understand why someone recently acting as prime minister has no idea about the meaning of going on one knee, as the issue has only been the leading global story for three weeks. So you can’t expect him to be as well informed as footballers, everyone in the world under 40, and almost everyone in the world over 40.

There are probably Bedouin people who stop at an oasis in the Sahara to take a knee in solidarity. I expect there are cosmonauts on space stations, and monks who have spent 30 years sitting on top of a lamp standard in the Andes, who know “taking a knee” isn’t from Game of sodding Thrones.

So Raab should be asked to address the next Black Lives Matter march, when he can say to an emotional crowd: “I think you’ve done enough kneeling. Now can you all do the Red Wedding for me next from season three?”

This has happened a few weeks after Raab’s colleague Matt Hancock said footballers needed to “make a contribution” to society.

The government showed the sort of sacrifice they mean, when they bravely went out of their way to cut funding school dinners for millions of the poorest kids in the country.

Some people breeze through life only thinking of themselves, but characters such as Hancock and Raab are prepared to take the time, to look at some of the most heartbreaking problems in the country, and say “I know a way we can make that worse”.

So Marcus Rashford wrote a letter demanding the government fund the dinners, and the government had to back down, proving again how footballers are not prepared to “make a contribution” to starving the nation’s children.

Boris Johnson congratulated Rashford, because the Manchester United footballer did a marvellous job of working out that if you stopped giving money for school dinners to people who didn’t have money for school dinners, they wouldn’t have any money for school dinners. That isn’t the sort of thing you can expect someone to know if they’re the government that made up that rule, but luckily it is the kind of specialist knowledge you pick up when your job is out-jumping a centre-back in the box when the ball comes in from a corner.

Hancock was even more respectful to Rashford, when he referred to the fine effort of “Daniel Rashford”, getting as much as half of his name exactly right.

Until recently, sports stars in this country, unlike in America, were steadfastly quiet about social issues. But now many footballers and pundits speak out about poverty, refugees and racism, as have Andy Murray, cricketer Moeen Ali and many others.

So Hancock is right. Sports stars should make a contribution.

Rashford could write a letter demanding the abolition of the global arms trade, a proposal for Priti Patel to be kept in a museum, and Stormzy to be commissioned to write a new national anthem. It would all be done by Monday.

Then he could pick his own cabinet from sportsmen and women, and the current government could be released to provide entertainment, by running round Premier League grounds trying to dodge thousands of flaming arrows, in a re-enactment of the Battle of the Bastards in Game of Thrones.