Ömrü iki haftayı bile bulamayan cin fikirli Süper Lig Projesi bağlamında Boris Johnson’un
sonucu belirleyici tavrını anlatıyor bu yazı. Onun ve partisinin geleneksel tutumundaki
değişimin izini sürüyor. Muhazakar partinin piyasaya, spora ve kültüre ilişkin yeni
kabullerini inceliyor. Ulaştığı sonuçlar çok çarpıcı.
Şahane yazının girişini aşağıya alıyorum.
IF ONLY BORIS JOHNSON had been as quick to respond to the threat of covid-19 as he was to
react to the threat of a new football super league. No sooner had six British clubs
announced their plan to form a breakaway league with top European clubs than the
government swung into action. Mr Johnson arranged a summit in Downing Street to discuss
ways of scuppering the scheme. Angry Tory MPs suggested possible punishments for
miscreants: a windfall tax on the breakaway clubs, fewer work permits to prevent the
signing of players from abroad, unleashing competition law, withdrawing police support
from matches and introducing a German-style ownership structure whereby fans own a
controlling 50%-plus-one of the clubs.
The Super League, a soufflé of arrogance and greed, quickly collapsed under sustained
assault from government and fans. Ed Woodward, the Manchester United executive widely
thought to be at the heart of the scheme, resigned. But despite its speedy demise the fracas
reveals something significant about the Conservative Party’s changing attitudes to business,
markets and globalisation.
Devamı da gayet ilginç.
In the Thatcher era the Conservatives acted as cheerleaders to the money-fuelled
transformation of a game that had become synonymous with dilapidated stands and
hooliganism. The most famous teams such as Liverpool and Manchester United became
global brands with a rising number of foreign players and fans. Foreign billionaires bought
storied clubs despite having no roots in the cities that gave birth to them. Millionaire players
and their wives and girlfriends set the era’s vulgar tone. The rickety old stadiums were
replaced by American-style arenas but the skyrocketing cost of tickets priced poorer fans
out of the game.
Mr Johnson approved of this transformation as recently as 2005 when he pronounced that
allowing the sale of Manchester United to the Glazer brothers, American sports
entrepreneurs, was “basic Conservative philosophy”. But this week he played a very different tune, reprimanding the “billionaire club owners” for dislocating football from its
host communities. In an article in the Sun—a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, who did
as much as anybody to drive the commercialisation of the game, and once tried to buy
Manchester United—he told fans: “It is your game, and you can rest assured that I’m going to
do everything I can to give this ludicrous plan a straight red.”
Mr Johnson’s thumbs-down reveals a profound change in the Conservative Party: the return
of the business-scepticism that Edward Heath expressed when he decried “the unacceptable
face of capitalism”. Mr Johnson has long since sloughed off his Thatcherism and now
supports a more strategic approach to business, sometimes befriending business people—
particularly supporters of Brexit like Sir James Dyson—but sometimes showing them the
cold shoulder. He supports an ambitious programme of state intervention to “level up” the
country and name-checks Michael Heseltine, Thatcher’s most formidable critic, as one of his
heroes, citing, in particular, his regeneration of Liverpool. Carrie Symonds, his girlfriend, is a
fan of all things green, even if that means sacrificing growth. A new generation of northern
Tory MPs constantly speaks up in Parliament on the plight of small-town Britain. Danny
Kruger, a former adviser to Mr Johnson, made a memorable maiden speech in which he
argued that “social infrastructure” should be treated as seriously as “economic
infrastructure”.
Tamamı için:
https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/04/21/boris-gives-the-europeansuper-league-the-boot?utm_campaign=the-economisttoday&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud
İlgili bir yazı daha:
https://www.economist.com/business/2021/04/21/europes-super-leaguescores-a-spectacular-own-goal?utm_campaign=the-economisttoday&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2021-
04-21&utm_content=article-link-1&etear=nl_today_1
