Tony Blair was keen to move Premier League football team to Belfast in late 1990s, Northern Ireland files reveal
Several newly released documents from the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland have given an insight into the changing nature of politics in the country at the end of the 1990s, including what the then PM proposed for Wimbledon FC.
The move would have been a "significant breakthrough" for Belfast, and "should be able to build up strong cross-community support and provide a positive unifying force in a divided city", a government note written in 1997 said.
The note suggested that then Premier League team Wimbledon FC would undergo a name change to Belfast United, after the move from south London.
This surely indicates a weird faith in political cause and effect, in the ability to change lives in a predictable manner by the masterful stroke of a pen. Even worse than weird, it also comes across as not entirely sane.
12 comments:
I don't accept 'cause and effect' as a good political argument because it assumes that movers and shakers really know what they are moving and shaking. They only think they know and their biases colour their thoughts.
If you restate the principle as 'circumstances and consequences' it implies rather less certainty about the outcomes.
DJ - I suspect their political world is weirder than we know where 'circumstances and consequences' would become known circumstances and known consequences. They seem to avoid uncertainty as an indicator of political weakness, which perhaps it is once the media have a sniff of it.
Their entire modus is failing to understand the unpredictability of their initiatives surely?
Tammly - they seem to avoid the unpredictability, as if they could understand it but that isn't how the game is played. As if it isn't even a major factor in their discussions.
I think the best approach to understanding Blair is to assume that the man was not mentally well from when he first came to our attention. It's scary, but more reassuring than the alternative, which is that he is some kind of evil genius. No genius would know so little about football and human nature.
As much as I think Blair has done the world a great disservice by being alive, I think I would have gone along with it if it had involved Millwall. You would probably have ended up with the IRA and UDA on the same side.
Penseivat
Sam - people like Blair certainly seem to be mentally impaired in their focus on the symbols of power, even when those symbols are more illusion than reality. If the pantomime which is the Most Noble Order of the Garter didn't wake him up, nothing will.
Penseivat - ha ha - Millwall unites everyone else.
Treating the Belfaaast of that era to Millwall of that era would have been more interesting.
The only good thing that Blair ever did was to keep Broon, the tongue gobbling Cyclops, out of No.10 for as long as he did.
Millwall - my former local team! Not that I ever did more than observe the stadium from the train to London Bridge.
"No genius would know so little about football": this is the chap who claimed to have cheered from the terraces for Wor Jackie at St James' Park some years after the aforesaid Jackie had left the club.
Blair is a fantasist, a liar, a crook, an ignoramus, and none too bright.
Doonhamer - and that was in spite of the sound of mobile phones thudding against the wall.
Tammly - observing it from the train sounds like a sound policy.
dearieme - a liar, a crook, an ignoramus, and none too bright sounds fair. His only real skill seems to be an ability to project plausibility to enough people. He needed a team around him to take care of everything else, because he couldn't do anything else.
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