DAN WOOTTON: We can now ignore David Beckham’s virtue signalling after Qatar propaganda – Daily Mail

Try for just one moment to transport yourself into the pea-sized brain of David Beckham.

You’re an iconic footballer with a combined family fortune of £380 million for whom your every extravagant desire in life is catered.

There are complimentary private jets paid for by big businesses or charities whenever you need to travel for work.

A £73 million property portfolio, with luxurious mansions in London, the Cotswolds, Miami and Dubai.

One of your most recent purchases was a £5 million 93.5 foot yacht named Seven where you regularly cruise with your wife Victoria and children Brooklyn, 23, Romeo, 19, Cruz, 17, and Harper, 11, on lengthy holidays of which most of us can only dream.

While you could comfortably never work again, international brands like Pepsi, Samsung, H&M, Haig and Adidas still furnish your coffers with millions more in commercial deals every year.

Despite this unimaginable wealth, you have portrayed yourself as a champion of minority groups and the underprivileged.

In social media posts, you have declared yourself a feminist, a gay rights champion and a humanitarian who cares about those mistreated in the third world.

Just imagine in such a scenario you’re offered £10 million to become the acceptable face of an Arab state where it’s illegal to be gay.

A state where a female rape victim can face seven years in prison for having sex outside marriage and one where women need permission to marry, travel or even to go to school via a male guardian.

And a state where thousands of young immigrants have been worked to death to construct a glittering football stadium ahead of this year’s controversial World Cup.

You’re warned by Amnesty International that such a deal with Qatar would do huge damage to the plight of those attempting to focus the world’s attention on the horrific conditions inside the totalitarian country.

You’re also aware your craven desire of being awarded a knighthood will surely be dashed for good.

In fact, any of the good work you’ve claimed to have done to improve human rights and equality internationally will be swept away.

Surely, you see sense and realise no amount of money is worth flushing your reputation down the Persian Gulf?

Not if you’re Beckham, a man so selfish, so greedy and so hypocritical that, in a newly unveiled promotional movie for Qatar, he describes the country as ‘perfection’.

Beckham even uses the big budget advertisement to enthuse that he ‘cannot wait’ to take his children to the ‘incredible place’.

I wonder which attractions he’ll show them?

Presumably not the building sites where more than 6,500 workers have died in despicable conditions since Qatar was awarded the World Cup.

Perhaps he could tell Romeo, who turns 20 tomorrow, the story of Ghal Singh Rai from Nepal who took his own life, aged just 20, after working as a cleaner in subhuman conditions at a Qatari camp for the workers constructing a World Cup stadium.

Beckham adds of Qatar in the promotional video: ‘The modern and traditional fuse to create something really special.’

By traditional, I wonder if he’s referring to the Sharia law that can see homosexuals put to death. Or the more modern punishments that include floggings and life in prison.

Beckham’s deal is symptomatic of a moral crisis in football ahead of the World Cup, where Gareth Southgate’s England team are still intending to take the knee against racial discrimination, despite agreeing to play in Qatar.

Well, what about the discrimination against women and gay people, lads? Are you just going to ignore that during the tournament?

This off the scale hypocrisy is why political gestures in sport should be banned; Southgate has been unwise to continue the charade knowing the Qatar World Cup is just around the corner.

Like all the best celebrity hypocrites, Beckham still intends to virtue signal and preach, which is why he must now be called out.

He remains a Unicef ambassador, for goodness sake.

And when Blackpool footballer Jake Daniels came out earlier this year, he said: ‘It’s a shame that when someone does come out that it’s such a strange thing. At the end of the day there will be a huge amount of gay people in sports, and why should they be any different from anyone else?’

Well, Mr Beckham that rings completely hollow given you are now a fully paid-up supporter of a state where I could be killed for my sexuality.

Have you expressed such a view to your mates who run Qatar?

It’s about time the world wakes up to Beckham’s approach to charity, which is actually all about improving his own brand.

The Beckileaks emails – released by a whistleblower in 2017 – suggested that he expected Unicef to stump up costs associated with his work because, in his words, ‘I don’t want to put my personal money into this cause’.

In one email, he charmingly ranted: ‘If there was no fund, the money would be for me. This f***ing money is mine.’

Beckham has made his choice and I accept that, but we can now ignore his virtue signalling forever more, knowing that he is a man devoid of values who will always put money before morals.

He doesn’t give a damn about the rights of women.

He doesn’t give a damn about equality for gay people.

He doesn’t give a damn about mistreated immigrant workers.

Heck, he doesn’t even give a damn about securing his precious knighthood.

Nope, David Beckham cares about one thing: The size of his bulging wallet.

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