by Sabrina Sweeney 

You have to wonder about politicians like Jacob Rees-Mogg who make crass political point scoring with the added embarrassment of not even being able to get that right. 
“A d..n close run thing, we clearly don’t need Europe to win... ‪#CricketWorldCupFinal” he tweeted on Sunday after England, captained by Irishman Eoin Morgan, beat New Zealand to win their first ever World Cup in what has been lauded as the greatest ever cricket match. 
Rees-Mogg sounded like he is either not as smart as he feigns, or has never followed cricket and doesn’t have one clue about the make up of this World Cup team. Either way he landed himself in hot water.  As he was informed after being rounded upon by thousands of commenters within minutes of his tweet, not only does the team’s captain hail from Dublin and previously played for Ireland, several of the players are immigrants.  The thing is, Rees-Mogg was lucky enough to be a spectator at Lord’s cricket ground on Sunday and actually watched the match go to a super over after the teams were tied. You’d like to think he had some knowledge of the players he was watching in this epic spectacle. And yet he still committed a complete own goal. 
So perhaps, under the guise of an Eton education and an accent more English than the Queen’s, we have majorly over-estimated his intelligence. 
Personally, I’m finding quite a bit of joy in the fact that this act of shameless political opportunism completely backfired on him. 
Eoin Morgan used his captain’s press conference following the match to praise his diverse team.
Asked whether the dramatic win over New Zealand was down to ‘the luck of the Irish’, he gracefully replied: “We had Allah with us as well’, adding: ‘I spoke to Adil (Rashid), he said Allah was definitely with us. 
“It epitomises our team. We are from quite diverse backgrounds and cultures and guys grow up in different countries. To actually find humour in the situation we were in at times was pretty cool”.
England cricket has always had players from overseas – it is by no means a new phenomena. When they reached the final in 1992 thee team was made up of players originally from Rhodesia, West India, Guyana and South Africa. 
And so too in this World Cup winning team, immigration has played a hugely significant role. Fast bowler Jofra Archer was born in Barbados and Ben Stokes hails originally from Christchurch, New Zealand, moving to the north west of England at the age of 12. Moeen Ali and Rashid are the grandchildren of Pakistani immigrants and both belong to the Mirpuri community. Then there’s Tom Curran and Jason Roy, both originally from South Africa
It’s not just sport that benefits from diversity and multiculturalism. Our health service depends on it, too. Think of the doctors, nurses and other staff who have made such a huge impact on the NHS. And our cities would not be so vibrant and interesting were it not for the influence of a diverse range of ethnicities. 
Do these isolationist politicians, such as Rees-Mogg, really believe we would be better off without people from Europe, or indeed anywhere else in the rest of the world? Their elite lives will hardly be affected by the protectionism they claim to want for the UK, but the rest of us will suffer, not that they care.  It’s a sorry state of affairs when we can’t even celebrate a magnificent sporting achievement without bringing politics into it. But what Rees-Mogg has - apparently unintentionally - achieved with his obtuse attempt at a jibe, is to highlight that this World Cup winning England squad was a team of men who’ve played fantastic cricket over the last six weeks, representing a country that has different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The team was all the better for its diversity and, as a society, we are all the better for it, too.