At the risk of sounding anti-Scottish, I couldn’t help but cringe at the recent fan “behaviour” over this World Cup. Bagpipes at 6am? Drinking Boston clean of beer? Processions through the streets? And all of that while your team is, well, as weak as it is? I am not sure if anything about Scotland’s starting 11 warranted such jingoistic confidence. Scotland has many strengths, but pulling off a World Cup win – even pulling itself out of the group stages – will never be one of them. “The Tartan Army” they call themselves. Please. Scotland, you don’t have an army. Were Vladimir Putin to come knocking for your oil, it would be England with an assist from France who were charged with clearing up the mess. No, in the world of international football the only places that have earned the right to such nationalistic flamboyance this month are the Argentinians, possibly the French and, sorry to say, the English, too. Make your own judgment on the merits of Spain. While you’re here, performative anti-Englishness might be one of the most boring national pastimes of Ireland and of Scotland, too. It screams of insecurity and lack of imagination. And when it comes to the football it is just wrong-headed. The only chance these islands have at triumph lies with Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane, so ought we on this western outcrop of the continent not all stick together? The case for the Irish, Welsh and Scottish to row in behind the English at a time like this is so utilitarianly obvious I cannot believe I have to spell it out.Yet this is all the beauty of the World Cup – not the football itself, the standard of which is lower than a mid-tier Premier League game. No, the World Cup functions as a singular excuse for petty nationalism – to exorcise meaningless grievances that would be unacceptable otherwise. I can open a column during the World Cup by complaining about Scottish fans, but I could never open a column just randomly complaining about Scottish people. Hating England outside of the tournament? Try-hard, derivative, historically ungenerous. Hating England in July 2026? Totally fine, actually. There is an irony here. Plenty of intellectual effort has been thrown at the idea that Europe – or the world – is more nationalistic than ever (historical memory of the 1940s seems to be lacking). It is true perhaps of the great powers. Donald Trump’s “America First” thing is peak-jingoism, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine somehow even further than that. And there is China’s bid for global dominance. Fine. But as that consequential struggle marches on, the idea that Europe, too, is in the throes of a nationalistic fit reads as rather quaint. It is counterintuitive, I suppose. Brexit was supposed to be the first of many departures from the European Union: everyone else would look on to the United Kingdom’s enlightened confidence and file out behind. Well-meaning commentators stroked their chins and declared the beginning of a new kind of chauvinism – where supranational structures were no longer warranted, when the nativist populations would rebel against the faceless Brussels elites, when Europe would start to crack and splinter. Fortunately, it was a case of mistaken identity. Just look at the basic facts of the matter. Now, we know that more British people are pro-EU than anti 10 years on from that paroxysm. Andy Burnham – almost certainly about to take over Labour and Number 10 – has flirted with the idea of rejoining. That would have been electoral suicide in the latter half of the last decade. Now, it is basically unremarkable. No one else has left the EU. Perhaps “Irexit” was just never catchy enough as a word. So back to the football. I wouldn’t want to overstate my case. But one of the great pleasures of international tournaments is precisely the excuse to flaunt nationalistic tendencies (we all have them) in a low-stakes way. Think of it as a pressure valve for humanity’s basest instinct. I would much rather watch the irritating “Tartan Army” march unglamorously through the streets of Boston – somehow in the belief that they might beat Brazil – than to see the energy channelled for the Scottish National Party at the ballot box. I didn’t much like it when Mary Lou McDonald marched behind a banner that read “England get out of Ireland”, but I can tolerate all the eye-rolls in Dublin about Harry Kane. No, Europe is not facing a crisis of jingoism – even Giorgia Meloni has moderated her position. Without wanting to be glib, now is really not the time for intra-Europe bickering and jockeying. There is still a war and, for now, still Trump. How useful it is then for everyone to expend that energy over offside rules and unfair referees? Think of it as a Live Action Roleplay, where the end result doesn’t really matter at all.