I don’t disagree with any of that, although I’d have to watch it again to see if it was inside or outside. For me it’s a red card either way.
VAR is allowed to intervene in direct red card decisions, so it sounds a bit like you’re saying they didn’t give it because they know they’d get slaughtered by the crowd/media/manager afterwards. I think that’s perfectly likely, but no basis to not give a decision so I was trying to understand how they might justify it.
I also think this highlights one of the potential problems with VAR: refs are scared to give decisions so they leave it to VAR thinking that VAR will correct them if they’re wrong, but VAR can’t always intervene or is reluctant to overrule the ref. The net result is blatant fouls like this Milner one get ignored despite everyone seeing it was a clear foul.