Sports Politics Through the Conference Season

Posted: Sat, 03 Oct 2015 13:00

Sports Politics Through the Conference Season

As usual September/October means heading into the conference season for the political parties and in the past the sport sector has followed them. In recent years however, for those of us who have been regulars at these events the number of people attending has certainly dwindled. So this week there was a hardy group of sports still represented at the conferences - us, The Sport and Recreation Alliance, Street Games and Dame Kelly Holmes Trust to name a few we spotted.

In the electoral cycle the first conference after a general election - especially in the new 5 year fixed term parliaments - is a strange affair. The Lib Dems almost disappeared out of sight in terms of coverage. This time round you would have expected the Labour conference to be extremely gloomy given the electoral defeat they had suffered in May. However, the election of Jeremy Corbyn had certainly livened up debate at the conference and given delegates a lift - but the parliamentary Labour Party a bit of a shock. So what did this mean for sport?

Well there were plenty of sporting analogies used on the platform (and in the Corbyn Speech) but certainly not much around the conference fringes. Thanks to DKHLT there was a fringe event but to be honest this was more focussed on the impact of sport on other aspects of government policy rather than for sports own sake.

What being at conference allows is much more casual conversation, weaving the case for sport into other events and in front of a wider range of policy makers other than the shadow team (now Micheal Dugher MP and Clive Efford MP). It allows you to meet local government representatives and other lobbyists where sport has an impact. I met the bookmakers for example...

We have lost two good advocates for sport form some key positions - Chris Bryant MP was really starting to make an impact as shadow DCMS SoS and Kevin Brennan MP has been great at Education in making the case for school sport. However, we only lose these people to other departments where the sport interests might crop up in a different way, so we need to keep them close still.

In his first speech to conference the new Shadow Secretary of State mentioned sport but did spend a bit more time on arts and culture. In his first article in The House magazine there was a similar bias so we have offered to help. We are here as a think tank to ensure all parties have the tools and evidence to make good policy.

It is clear Labour wants to start with a blank sheet of paper and has announced a spending review - so there is plenty of opportunity to work with the new team. It is true that we are 5 years from an election and Labour is in opposition but we know the sector would love as much consensus and cross party thinking as possible and again we hope we can offer that space given the cross party membership and nature of the Think Tank. We are and need to be trusted by all parties because our thinking is based on outcomes not politics. We manage to do that internally so we hope we can help both government and opposition do this in Parliament.

Andy Reed OBE

Tags: Clive Efford, labour, sport policy

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