They all agreed to do nothing and let the premier league **** them off. The government don't give two ****s about money going into the North East.
Basically the government doesn't care about a few million being invested in the North East and cares more about votes. They know there's only 100k people in Newcastle that want it to go through and 60 million that don't.
I read it. They were on the same page and were going to approve it. We now know that that changed because of Hoffman.
The foreign office didn't need to do anything. All it says is that the PL talked to them. At this point it was going to go through so just to reaffirm the government didn't need to do anything.
The government wanted it stopped too.. with the department stating that the lack of a statement from the Premier League was 'helpful' Seems fairly obvious given they don't want the Saudis seeing what went on for fear of breaking relationships with them