SPORT and politics should never mix, say certain people who occupy a planet that is unfamiliar to the rest of us.

Of course sport and politics mix. They always have done and always will.

From Hitler’s attempt to use the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin as a showcase for the Aryan race, to the US-inspired boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the Soviet Union’s retaliation in Los Angeles in 1984, the world’s greatest sporting tournament has often been the target of those who would use sport for political ends – the Munich massacre in 1972 being by far the worst episode of that sort.

I lived through the black African states’ boycott of the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986 caused entirely by Margaret Thatcher’s intransigence over sanctions against the apartheid policies of the South African Government. I was never so proud of a politician than I was that day when the late Dr John McKay, the then Lord Provost of Edinburgh for whom I worked, acted on principle and left his seat in Meadowbank Stadium when Thatcher had the sheer gall to attend the Games. McKay had asked her not to attend because of the damage she had done, but the Grantham Gorgon insisted on coming anyway so the Lord Provost walked out rather than be a hypocrite – if the Scottish Labour Party is ever to recover, it needs more people like John McKay.

Politics and sport can mix for the common good. It was the sporting boycott of South Africa which helped to destroy apartheid, and it was Nelson Mandela’s embrace of the Springboks, so brilliantly portrayed in Clint Eastwood’s film Invictus, which helped heal the wounds in that country.

Politics mixing with sport can also be very destructive. When El Salvador and Honduras played a World Cup qualifier in 1969 with the former winning, long-simmering enmity between the two countries exploded into an a war in which thousands died.

Many sportspeople have gone on to careers in politics. Take Lord Sebastian Coe, for instance – and you can take him, because he’s not exactly playing a blinder at the moment. Or how about Ahmed Ben Bella – who? He played one game for Olympique Marseille, and then went on to become the first president of an independent Algeria.

The great Italian footballer Gianni Rivera became a Government minister and Member of the European Parliament, while Pele famously became Minister of Sport in Brazil, where the brilliant Romario is currently a senator.

It is almost par for the course that politicians like to be associated with sporting success, though when Prime Minister David Cameron dons an Aston Villa shirt and asks us to believe he is a man of the people instead of a posh Tory toff, people see right through him.

It is Cameron who has to make a very tough decision on the future of Britain and Europe this year. And guess what – it involves football.

It has probably not escaped your notice that this year will see the 50th anniversary of England winning the World Cup, an event that took place on July 30 1966.

Personally I hope to be out of the country for a month either side of that Golden Jubilee. Nothing against Bobby Moore and the players who deservedly won the cup by beating West Germany 4-2 in a thrilling final, but the sheer bloody triumphalism of the English media will make millions of Scots, Welsh, Irish and German people want to puke.

Here’s the rub – the latest reports say that Cameron may go to the country with his ‘in-out’ referendum in July. He thinks he is going to get a deal with the other countries of the European Union so that the UK can continue as some sort of half-baked member of a union which, frankly, looks more and more like a rich corporations’ club every day.

If he gets a deal Cameron will then campaign for Britain to stay in the EU, and the betting is heading that way at the moment. But say he doesn’t get a deal, what will Cameron do? When will he call the referendum for which, lest we forget, he has yet to name the date, something he and his Westminster toadies in all parties gave Alex Salmond pelters for in the run-up to our indyref?

How about mid July when English nationalism – a latent force that is always bubbling just beneath the surface – is absolutely certain to erupt as a result of the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the greatest victory in England’s football history?

We will see some strange sights whichever way Cameron campaigns. We’ll see Sir Bobby Charlton and Sir Geoff Hurst wheeled out to give their views, but probably not Jackie Charlton because he’s too damned honest.

Maybe Vladimir Putin will exhort England to leave the EU, saying they owe him a favour for Soviet linesman Tofik Bahramov decreeing that the third English ‘goal’ was over the line.

If Cameron decides to be all lovey-dovey with Europe, will he invite Angela Merkel to mark the anniversary, despite the fact that the country of West Germany ceased to exist more than 25 years ago and she was raised in East Germany?

If the referendum is indeed in July, this will undoubtedly be one of those occasions when sport and politics mix. And if the English vote to leave the EU and take the rest of us with them, the World Cup Golden Jubilee might well be to blame.

In which case I will not be alone in saying, “they think the UK’s over, it is now”.