Evening Standard comment: Saving all London’s football clubs is vital | A black legal pioneer | More women please

Powerful calls are being made today for action on two fronts to protect the country’s Football League clubs, including those in London, from the threat of financial catastrophe because of a deadly combination of longstanding problems within the game’s structure and the crippling effects of the ban on fans being admitted to grounds.

In respect of the latter, the campaign to allow supporters to return backed by this newspaper and launched by the former England star Ian Wright gathers pace, with support from clubs including QPR, Charlton, Millwall and Leyton Orient, all of which depend heavily on ticket receipts and other match-day income to keep them alive.

They make the valid point that it’s contradictory to let theatres admit audiences in limited numbers but bar our professional football clubs from doing the same. Nor does it make sense when Charlton has already shown that it’s possible to let supporters in safely by staging a test event in which 1,000 fans were successfully admitted to a game last month. There’s no reason why other clubs couldn’t do the same.

Letting them do this should be part of achieving a sensible balance that allows parts of our lives and economic activity to continue during the pandemic, while trying to keep coronavirus infections down through other restrictions.

At the same time, former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has joined the debate over the proposed carve-up of English football by the so-called “Big Six” clubs.

He is calling for government intervention and a “solution to support the smaller clubs” to be thrashed out between the FA and Premier League. He’s right, because the principle of keeping afloat our smaller clubs, which are such important parts of local communities, is vital.

A black legal pioneer

The appointment of Lionel Idan as the CPS’s first black male chief crown prosecutor comes not a moment too soon amid calls for compulsory anti-racism training at every level of our legal system.

Last month, for example, barrister Alexandra Wilson was mistaken for a defendant three times in one day at court. Meanwhile, the Bar Standards Board says ethnic minority students are almost half as likely to get a pupillage than white students with similar levels of academic attainment.

Just 1.1 per cent of QCs are black. Black lawyers are also “less likely” to be successful in applications for judicial appointments even though their presence on the bench would be valuable at a time when black offenders remain more likely to be jailed than white criminals for comparable crimes.

Mr Idan can’t alter much of this, but his presence in a senior role sends a valuable message in encouraging change.

Londoners should wish him well.

More women please

The Financial Reporting Council says that the country’s accountancy firms aren’t doing enough to ensure diversity at the top, with women notably under-represented in senior positions.

It’s not good enough and these important businesses must do much better.

Read more

I’ll tackle hate crime, says first black CPS male chief prosecutor