Footballer Harry Maguire has said he did not give the Conservative Party permission to use a viral photo of him at the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The image, which shows Maguire talking to his now-wife Fern Hawkins as she stood pitch-side after England beat Colombia on penalties, quickly went viral and became a popular meme.
Maguire joined in the fun at the time, celebrating England’s World Cup success by tweeting it with the caption: “Can you ask the neighbours to put the bins out on Monday? We’re not going home just yet”.
On Tuesday, the Tories used the photo in a post on X to mark the introduction of the Government’s Football Governance Bill, which will see the launch of a new football regulator.
The party captioned the photo: “Rishi said any League with me in it would be Super anyways”.
The tweet has been widely blasted on X, where it had been viewed more than 2.4m times by Friday afternoon, and slammed as “cringeworthy”, “awful” and “not funny”.
“This is cringe enough to make them lose the election,” said one X user, while another wrote: “Folks, you can’t let the intern run your social accounts, it just looks amateur!”
Another, named Harriet Preest, wrote: “Omg. Seriously you must stop. This is soo awful. It’s not even funny.”
Others questioned how Maguire would feel about his photo had been used by a political party.
“I feel for @HarryMaguire93 here, unless he’s agreed it,” said one user.
When asked if he was aware the Tories had used the photo, Maguire said, in comments reported by The Telegraph: “No, I haven’t seen it”.
Asked if his permission had been sought, he said: “No, they have had no permission. I didn’t even know about the advert to be honest, so, I will have a look after this.”
The copyright is understood to lie with Getty Images, which took the photograph.
The Conservative Party has been approached by the Standard for a comment.
