Beginning to See the Light: The Glory Game

 

‘By hook or crook I will (Hey!)

English Chelsea fan (Hey!)

This is your last game (Hey!)

We’re not Galatasary (Hey!)

We’re Sparta F.C. (Hey!)

Sparta!’

 

We start this week with football, and this quote; ‘The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.’ ⁽¹⁾

 
The trouble is that now it’s only about money, and it has been for years, the Super League was just the latest apparition. Some people seem to retain a misty-eyed Stanley Matthews concept of the game, one well known current player wrote in his impassioned tweet against the new league, ‘I am still a little boy who just loves to play football ‘. What he omitted to mention is that this ‘little boy’ has just signed a new contract which, according to the Sun, is reputed to be worth £385,000 per week. ⁽²⁾

There is a direct correlation between success on the pitch and a clubs financial backing. Two of the highest profile purchases have been Chelsea by Roman Abramovich, and Manchester City by Abu Dhabi. Both were moderately successful prior to the acquisition, whereas post the acquisition both have become dominant amassing raft of trophies and spending C.£2bn on players.

The link below shows the Premier League wages table, unsurprisingly the six that tried to break away are the six with the highest wage costs. More often than not the best players get the highest wages.

https://www.spotrac.com/epl/payroll/

People eulogise about the system in Germany where the fans own 50%+1 of their respective clubs. The following link shows the estimated value of the clubs:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/300578/team-value-of-soccer-teams/

Of the six that tried to break away the lowest valued club is Tottenham at $1.6bn, my question is this; Tottenham’s owners would expect a premium to that value to sell, let’s assume they settle for $2bn, who is going to pay that for an asset controlled by others? 
 

‘this ‘little boy’ has just signed a new contract which is reputed to be worth £385,000 per week’

 
Perhaps the most surprising thing was complaints from such avaricious people and entities, such as the Premier League, UEFA, Sky, BT and Mike Ashley. Perhaps their concern was the fear of missing out?

Of course, the list wouldn’t be complete without that ‘well-known protectionist and guardian of the little man Boris Johnson.’

The very same Johnson who used the Margaret Thatcher Lecture to state that inequality is ‘essential’ to the human order, that hedge funds and ‘the Gordon Gekkos of London’ should be treated as kings, and who lauds the innate virtues of the wealthiest 2%.

The 14 clubs who were left out conveniently forgot that many of them were part of the 1992 breakaway from the Football League that led to the formation of the Premier League, or as the Guardian wonderfully put it, ‘Thatcherism in a pair of shorts.’

Of the six clubs who made a bold bid for the exit, three, Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal, are owned by US investors, Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi, Chelsea by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and Tottenham by the Bahamas-based currency trader Joe Lewis.

AC Milan are owned by a US hedge fund, while Fenway Sports Group, the owner of Liverpool, is cut from the same cloth. The investors and billionaires that own Juventus, Spurs and Manchester United, seek to increase profits and eliminate risk: as a board member of one of the breakaway Premier League clubs told Sky Sports, the owners believe their ‘primary job is to maximise our revenues and profits. The wider good of the game is a secondary concern.’

Roman Abramovich has used Chelsea to extricate himself and his fortune from the grasps of Putin’s Russia. Manchester City are the public face of their UAE owner’s foreign policy. The Gulf states do not need football’s money, but their goals are better served by an absence of public regulation from national football associations or UEFA.
 

‘primary job is to maximise our revenues and profits. The wider good of the game is a secondary concern’

 
For the now the barbarians have been turned back from the gates of Wembley mainly due to the reaction of their fans, and football in general, rather than the ‘legislative bomb’ threatened by the PM. Presumably his sudden love for the glory game falls within the Tories’ strategy of appealing to their new voters in the north and Midland’s former ‘red wall’ seats, taken from Labour in 2019.

Johnson said, ‘Football clubs in every town and city and at every tier of the pyramid have a unique place at the heart of their communities and are an unrivalled source of passionate local pride.’

This comes only days after he was revealed to have wanted last year’s proposed takeover of Newcastle United by a Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, despite failing the Premier Leagues ‘fit and proper’ test.

Johnson’s reaction to the proposed Super League shows what this column continues to highlight; the Tories ability to turn seemingly all situations to their advantage, and to be in-tune with the songbook of their targeted electorate. Whilst the cynical contradictions displayed by their on-going embrace of the super-rich regimes and individuals shows the depth of cronyism and lobbying entrenched within the party.
 

‘the Tories ability to turn seemingly all situations to their advantage’

 
Only last week it was revealed that Matt Hancock failed to declare his interest in the company ‘Topwood’, the health secretary’s family firm that had won contracts from the NHS, to parliamentary authorities for more than two months, and had never previously declared his family’s longstanding involvement with it.

Topwood won a tender competition to secure a place as an approved contractor with the NHS in Wales in early 2019. At the time, the firm was owned by Hancock’s sister and other family members. Documents lodged with Companies House show that on 1 February a minority stake in the firm was transferred to Hancock. According to a report on the Guido Fawkes blog, the firm won contracts with the NHS in Wales the following month, though this is not the responsibility of the UK government. It was not until 12 April that Hancock declared his interest in the firm.

As the shadow health minister, Justin Madders, said, ‘It is now clear this Conservative government has been infected with widespread cronyism and is unable to identify where the line is drawn between personal and departmental interests. It’s one rule for them, another for everybody else. There are serious questions to answer from Matt Hancock and there needs to be a full inquiry and immediate publication of all documents relating to Topwood’s acceptance on to the framework contract in 2019.’

Yesterday we had the PM himself having to defend his position in the House, saying he will publish his text messages and ‘make absolutely no apology’ for the exchanges with businessman James Dyson promising to ‘fix’ tax status for the firm to help build ventilators.

In the text Johnson pledged: ‘I will fix it tomo! We need you. It looks fantastic.’

The PM then texted him again, saying: ‘[Chancellor] Rishi [Sunak] says it is fixed!! We need you here,’

At PM’s questions yesterday, Johnson was bullish about his response, saying: ‘I make absolutely no apology at all for shifting heaven and earth and doing everything I possibly could, as any prime minister would in those circumstances, to secure ventilators for the people in this country and to save lives.’
 

‘I will fix it tomo! We need you. It looks fantastic.’

 
Keir Starmer accused the government of ‘sleaze, sleaze, sleaze’ after leaked texts from Johnson promised that the pro-Brexit billionaire’s employees would not have to pay extra tax if they came to the UK to make ventilators during the pandemic.

Dyson’s ventilators were never approved for use in the NHS for Covid-19 patients.

These cronyism scandals are different to those suffered by John Major’s government; then it was backbench MPs who were looking after their wallets, e.g., Jonathan Aitken lost everything over a two-night stay at the Paris Ritz. Government ministers’ scandal of choice was sex, e.g., David Mellor. Who could forget the Chelsea shirt? ⁽³⁾  

Now we have a former-PM, David Cameron, desperately lobbying on behalf of a bankrupt Greensill to salvage his share options, reputed to be worth £22m.

There is connectivity at the highest levels of government; crony appointments, contracts swelled to huge proportions by the exigencies of the coronavirus and handed to companies connected to the Tory party, the normal checks and balances dispensed with as civil servants were overruled by ministers.

This governments culture is top-down, Johnson has never made any pretence of values, basic or otherwise, a man who wallows in his own dishonesty. A moral crusade coming from him would simply be mere political opportunism.
 

‘a man who wallows in his own dishonesty’

 

Johnson’s moral compass is his own, which explains why he sees nothing wrong with Jennifer Arcuri securing financial sponsorship for her business from City Hall when he was mayor of London and they were lovers. Then there is the expensive makeover of the Downing Street flat paid for by an unnamed benefactor.

Robert Jenrick goes unpunished despite facilitating an ‘unlawful’ planning decision that saved Richard Desmond, the property developer and Tory donor, £45m in taxes.

There is the ongoing resistance to any open accounting of which friends and contacts of Tory ministers, MPs, peers and advisers were given access to gravy train of C-19 contracts.

In addition to the  financial transgression of this government there are also ethical shortcomings; it is now 5-months since the resignation of Sir Alex Allan, the invigilator of the ministerial code, in protest at Mr Johnson’s refusal to accept his findings about bullying by Priti Patel. The fact that this position of overseeing ethics remains vacant, tells us all we need to know about this government’s priorities and integrity.

This is where we return to a point I have oft made in recent months; what does this government stand for? Its faux patriotism is a diversion from what? What are their policies?

Sometimes it’s austerity, then it’s levelling up; one day its concerns are climate change the next day they are reopening coal mines. They’re free marketeers, destroying their own markets and fiscal conservatives, to whom money is no object. The answer is simply to stay in power.

If this government is defined by one thing it is Brexit, and Brexit defines this government; built on a lie.
 

‘They’re free marketeers, destroying their own markets and fiscal conservatives, to whom money is no object’

 
Within Brexit there was always the Northern Ireland (‘NI’) conundrum. As John Major and Tony Blair pointed out in the referendum campaign, if the UK left the single market and customs union there had to be a border somewhere, either on the island of Ireland or in the Irish Sea. In either case, someone’s rights were going to be hurt: nationalists or unionists.

In December 2019, Boris Johnson opted to put the border in the Irish Sea to get his Brexit deal over the line. He then chose to lie about it, live on TV, saying there would be no border and that no one would have to fill in any forms. Initially, the unionist response was supportive with Arlene Foster saying that NI had the best of both worlds.

However, the truth is now coming out with Unionists realising it was they who had lost, and that British PM had brazenly lied to everyone. The DUP, seeing support haemorrhaging to the Traditional Unionist Voice, a more radical unionist party, responded by demanding that the NI protocol be axed, which has led to ongoing rioting returning to the streets.

This debacle only endorses the Tories ‘win at all costs mentality. Everything and everyone are subservient to their holy grail on maintaining their grip on power.

NI is only part of the quartet that makes up the United Kingdom. The ‘Union’ is made up of England, NI, Scotland, and Wales. Perhaps I should replace ‘is’ with ‘was’.

Next month, if opinion polls are correct, the Scottish National party will win another term as Scotland’s government, and with it a mandate to hold a referendum on independence.
 

‘Everything and everyone are subservient to their holy grail on maintaining their grip on power’

 
The fact we have reached this point is a mark of the slovenliness of Boris Johnson’s government who’s for avoiding the breakup of the United Kingdom seems based on ‘hope’.

Two reports from Cambridge University’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy, and Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, show a succession of bad habits in the way British governments have treated the nations and regions of the UK since the modern devolution process began in 1997.

The original mistake was ‘the asymmetrical approach of uneven empowerment.’ Two crucial choices were made at the start: England was ignored, and UK parliamentary sovereignty remained unchallenged.

Central government in London developed a ‘devolve and forget’ mindset. The Cambridge team argues that ‘those operating at the political centre became too disengaged from, and perhaps even complacent about’ devolution’s continuing implications. One author, the former civil servant Philip Rycroft, says ‘concern for the territorial state is not in the bloodstream of the UK state’.

An example of Johnson’s lack of engagement with the UK union is detached attitude to the crisis he has helped create in NI.

Brexit has bought independence to the fore: The Oxford report argues that Brexit ‘laid waste to a delicate constitutional balance’ that has existed since the Act of Union in 1707, which based the relationship between England and Scotland as being of partnership and consent. Prior to the 1921 establishment of Ireland the relationship between England and Ireland was more coercive. Since the partial resolution of the Irish question in 1921, the union has been based on the assumption of consent between the four parties.

Post-Brexit, and under this government, the union is no longer based on consent, but on law. The law is made at Westminster, which is sovereign. England dominates Westminster. The Internal Market Act further enhanced UK government power.

In addition to Brexit, C-19 has seeded the idea of a PM ‘who speaks for England alone’ as relations between the four nations of the UK deteriorate amid ‘deep-rooted complacency’, warned Philip Rycroft, the permanent secretary to the Brexit department until 2019 in a recent report.

Rycroft said the pandemic had deepened the crisis with a breakdown of communications with central government and the demonstration to citizens that devolved leaders could chart their own course.

After the initial outbreak of the pandemic public messaging was coordinated, this ceased when Johnson announced the reopening of schools in late spring 2020 before agreeing it with devolved nations, and ceased Cobra meetings until the autumn, replacing them with new committees with no devolved representation, leading to the devolved leaders charted a different course. ‘As other UK nations pursue different lockdown rules and messaging, the public may be adapting to the strange idea of a prime minister who speaks for England alone,’ Rycroft said.

Rycroft said Johnson had a ‘muscular brand of unionism’ that asserted the value of the union rather than demonstrating it, appearing reluctant to share platforms with first ministers.

I think the term ‘muscular’ is particularly apt for Johnson’s government. It reflects so much of what they are about, be it unionism and patriotism, their dealings with dissenters inside and outside the House of Commons, and in their politics as evidenced by their reaction to the proposed super league and the promise of a ‘legislative bomb’.

There is no policy, it’s a series of reactions, naked opportunism, but like in football there is a goal. The goal is the retention of power. There is nothing glorious about that.
 

‘I won’t get on my knees

Don’t make me do that please

I’ve been away but now I’m back’

 
Notes:

1. Danny Blanchflower, football legend!
2. https://www.sportbible.com/football/football-news-premier-leagues-top-earners-revealed-after-kevin-de-bruyne-mega-deal-20210408
3. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2271002/Antonia-Sancha-51-mistress-helped-bring-David-Mellor.html

 
Since news of the Super League broke last weekend we have been eagerly awaiting Philip’s take on matters both as a keen supporter of the beautiful game and as a merciless critic of unbridled and amoral greed; our wait lasted longer than the league, but he didn’t disappoint.

The sums of money are truly eye-watering and the story of the ‘little boy who just loves to play football’ dragging down £385.000 a week, shows just how far it is from anything that grass roots fans could possibly comprehend.

Whether big business or elite sport, the urge to amass or legitimise obscene amounts of money and then kick the ladder away is strong; no great surprise then that Boris should act swiftly and decisively to quell the rebellion – and certainly quicker than he was to notice that petrol bombs had returned to the Falls Road.

Was it as a result of his revulsion at the naked greed being displayed around the boardroom table? Unlikley, and Philip’s conclusion is that it was much more about responding to the grief of disaffected fans – particularly in the red-wall constituencies that Boris now needs to keep onside. 

A bit of ‘come on lads we’re all in this together, Engerland, Engerland, Engerland….’ will do him no harm at all and he’ll get those snaps of Jennifer Arcuri draped in a union flag out if you’re not careful. Whatever makes you stand to attention I suppose.

Philip has long voiced the opinion that Boris is as close to bombproof as it is possible to be and certainly Sir Keir seems unable to lay a glove on him because the government is absolutely peerless at shapeshifting; the list of dodgy deeds, misrepresentation and downright lies is long, but nothing seems to stick, because there is seemingly always a new cause that is being addressed to the satisfaction of those aggrieved.

Matt Hancock neglecting to mention that he was a shareholder in his sister’s company that was awarded NHS contracts, ‘Dodgy’ Dave pleading for help to keep Greensill afloat long enough for him to cash in his chips, Robert Jenrick tipping Lord Beaverbook the wink and depriving the poorest borough in the land of £50m and Boris ‘fixing’ tax affairs for the inventor of one of his favourite suction devices would at least put a ding in the side of most administrations, but this lot just shrug it off.

The corruption and cronyism is now front and centre and as bold as brass; at least David Mellor preferred a little privacy when he got his kit on and dominated the box.   

The Northern Irish issue is not going away any time soon, and the likelihood of a second referendum on Scottish devolution are making the union look pretty fragile, but events across the Channel may convince some that we’re better together.

Meantime, the bad news keeps coming post-Brexit and we are left to ponder what issue may finally trip Boris up, as history tells us that will surely be the case; it may come from somewhere less obvious.

With venues opening up and crowds attending events at places like the O2, Wembley and the Crucible, a lot of people that have been prevented from saying goodbye to their loved ones are incandescent about the limit on mourners to 30. The Queen cut a sorry figure at St George’s Chapel, but in defense of the policy Kwasi Kwateng offered little more than ‘because we say so’.

Then there is climate – Boris being Boris, ahead of the COP26 conference which he will host, made an exceptionally bold commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 78% by 2035. The very next day Mr Kwateng was pressed into service again to explain that Heathrow expansion was not affected because it would be ‘sustainable’ – depending upon Sustainable Aviation Fuels that, er, don’t yet exist. You underestimate Greta at your peril Boris.

And lastly, a third wave of the virus could nobble him, and the way that the government has played fast and loose with India could easily take us there; given a week to get back to the UK without quarantine, airlines clamoured to put on charters. On the day before India was put on the red list planes were arriving at Heathrow from Delhi where people were dying on trolleys and the country registered 314,000 new cases. Let’s just hope that’s not the case, but keeping the country off that list that the less-afflicted Pakistan and Bangladesh were on seems dangerous politics.

Two tracks, just for fun The Fall and ‘Theme From Sparta FC’ and Jesus and Mary Chain with ‘Sometimes Always’. Enjoy. 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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