When Downing Street briefed its intention to include a plan to give football fans more powers in the running of their clubs in Labour’s 2010 general election manifesto, the critics carped that this was another pie-in-the-sky proposal from a government that was gasping for breath. While the cynics suggested it was a craven attempt to curry favour with a section of the electorate who rarely makes it to the polling station, Gordon Brown’s commitment to football governance had far-reaching consequences.
Eager to nullify Labour’s unexpected lurch into the beautiful game, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats rushed out pledges of their own. After the formation of the coalition, there was even a commitment in the coalition agreement ‘to support the cooperative ownership of football clubs by their supporters’. For much of this parliament, there has been a strong cross-party consensus on the need for reform of a game that has slowly been eating itself. New sports minister Hugh Robertson described football ‘as the worst governed sport in Britain’ and a select committee inquiry into the game’s governance endorsed radical proposals like a more independent FA, a licensing system similar to the one that operates in Germany to eliminate debt and regulatory tweaks to give supporters’ groups more rights to run their own clubs.
How disappointing it was to hear on Friday, the same day that Port Vale came the latest in a long list of British sides to call in the administrators, that the football authorities had produced such a pitiful response to the select committee report. In a begrudging acceptance of the need for change, the ‘core’ football stakeholders delivered a fudge that demonstrated precisely why so many fans now question whether they have the game’s best interests at heart. The FA stood accused of surrendering the authority to investigate their members, while leading football writers described the game’s governing body as languishing in the Premier League’s shadow.
Most serious of all was the government’s apparently ‘enthusiastic’ welcome for this piecemeal package. The vague recognition of the benefits of licensing was far from ideal, given that this safeguard against the English’s game debt mountain would be the most effective means of making football sustainable. Since 1992, 92 clubs, from Premier League to what was formerly known as the conference, have become insolvent – the equivalent of the entire top four divisions of professional football. The spectre of Portsmouth looms large, with the troubled south coast club in their second spell in administration in just two seasons, and poor old Darlington have had four periods of insolvency in 15 years.
As with so many other issues the government has mismanaged, there’s a real opportunity for Labour here. Our record on football in government was respectable, from the setting up of Supporters’ Direct, which still helps supporters run their own clubs today, to the work of the Football Foundation in promoting the grassroots game. The Labour benches aren’t short of passionate speakers on the subject either. Steve Rotheram’s emotional Hillsborough tribute was one of the best parliamentary addresses in recent memory, while Tom Greatrex brings to the Commons the experience of having founded a Premier League supporters’ trust at Fulham. If Ed Miliband wants to continue his recent upsurge in the polls, he could do far worse than backing the campaign for more imaginative reform of the people’s game.
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Daniel Crawford is a Labour councillor in the London borough of Ealing and on the committee of the Fulham Supporters’ Trust. He tweets @dancrawford85
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