Sport in the UK election manifestos: bullshit, waffle and one cross-party pledge
With the general election two weeks away, we examined the leading parties' manifestos to discover what they are promising on sport - and were largely disappointed
Sport doesn’t matter in any meaningful sense to any of the political parties who are contesting the 2024 general election in the UK, where the Labour Party are favourites to win on July 4.
That, at least, is the only conclusion it is possible to reach having analysed the official manifesto documents of the five parties currently having the most support across the UK: the Labour Party (42%), the Conservative Party (21%), Reform UK (15%), the Liberal Democrats (11%) and the Green Party (6%).
These numbers rise and dip, of course, with Reform ahead of the Conservatives in recent days in some polls. But these five parties will collectively share 95% or more of all votes cast in July’s election. The Scottish National Party are sixth, but at the time of writing they have yet to publish their manifesto.
I can conclude that most of the parties don’t see sport as important by the meagre amount of words they each dedicate to the subject in their manifestos. And of the words they do use, many of them are waffle or bullshit, by which I mean pledges that they simply won’t ever be able to deliver.
It goes without saying that there are lots of major issues the parties need to tackle, from a cost of living crisis, a crumbling NHS, education, a land war in Europe, national security, the economy, and on and on. But sport either does, or can, intersect with all of those in some way.
Below is a summary of the sport content in each party’s manifesto, set against the total words in each manifesto, including headlines and small print.
The Conservative document contains the most words on sport (244 of 27,131) or just under 1% of the manifesto, but of those words, only 48 of them (0.18% of the manifesto) could reasonably constitute a pledge or promise, as opposed to general waffle, more of which shortly.
The parties are ranked in the table below by the percentage of their manifesto dedicated to actual pledges or specific targets related to sport.
The Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and the Conservatives all spend more words making actual promises on sport than the Labour Party, pitifully small as they all are. Those first three, of course, are all in a position to pledge with impunity, become none of them stand any chance whatsoever of forming the next Government.
As for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, their manifesto, aka their ‘Contract’ with the British people, contains a total of nine words about sport, and they are not even really words about sport.
In their full glory, at the bottom of page 18 of their document, those words are: “Protect Country Sports: These increase investment and help conservation.”
I think these probably translate as: “We’ll legalise fox hunting, because we love dog whistling.”
The first time I took an in-depth look at political parties’ manifesto claims about sport was in 2010, the year that Sporting Intelligence was launched and that David Cameron’s Tory party hoped to win a majority of seats in Parliament in an early May election.
They failed, and ended up in coalition with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats.
Back then the Labour Party dedicated a whopping 550 words to sport in their manifesto, or no less than 1.8% of the document. The Tories had 123 words on sport, or 0.43%. The Lib Dems had 96 words on sport, or 0.44 per cent of the content.
Back then, Labour promised to bring “mutualism to the heart of football” and pledged: “Sports governing bodies will be empowered to scrutinise takeovers of clubs, ensuring they are in the long-term interests of the club and the sport. We will develop proposals to enable registered Supporters Trusts to buy stakes in their club.”
Plus ça change, although I guess not being in power for 14 years meant we didn’t get to see if they meant it.
The Tory “sport coverage” in 2010 took up a little more than a quarter of a page. The main theme was the upcoming London 2012 Olympics (four mentions), with the pledge: “We will deliver a successful Olympics that brings lasting benefits for the country as a whole.”
Deeper in the report, in a section about empowering people, the Tories said: “We will . . . reform the governance arrangements in football to enable co-operative ownership models to be established by supporters.”
How’s that going, 14 years on?
Anyway, back to 2024, and the Conservatives’ words on sport in this year’s manifesto. There are mentions of non-specific increased funding for ‘School Games Organisers’ and some waffle about how much they’ve spent “to build, renovate and maintain grass pitches and multi-sport facilities.”
But as for hard pledges, their 48 words are split between “We will mandate two hours of PE every week in primary and secondary schools” and “We will introduce laws to ensure our fans never again face the threat of clubs in England joining breakaway closed-shop competitions and giving them more of a voice through the Independent Football Regulator.”
The pledge on PE in schools seems firm enough: it will become a mandatory two hours per week. Most but not all primary schools already have two hours and about half of secondary schools do, although it’s not mandatory for those who remain in school beyond the leaving age of 16.
Official figures from August 2023 showed 4,000 hours of PE had been lost from the curriculum in state-funded secondary schools in the previous academic year. This meant PE and sport in secondary schools had fallen 12% since the London Olympics.
As for the Tories’ other promises in 2024, I’m not sure what to make of: “We will introduce laws to ensure our fans never again face the threat of clubs in England joining breakaway closed-shop competitions.”
Really? What kind of laws? On the face of it, this appears to suggest a Conservative government would actually make it illegal for any club to join a Super League.
It goes without saying that the Super League was widely detested when the greedy owners of Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and Liverpool announced they were joining it in 2021. Fan outrage was a major factor in the project crashing and burning inside a couple of days.
Yet the Tories are now saying they would actually introduce legislation to make it a punishable offence? I’m intrigued to know more. But just like the Tory pledge to have Rwanda flights up and running by mid-July, it doesn’t really matter what they promise, because they are not going to be in power.
As for giving fans more power through the Independent Football Regulator, that very regulator, about which we had no specific details, was tossed aside when Rishi Sunak called an early election.
Moving on to Labour, they make two specific pledges along the same lines as the two from the Tories above. “We will introduce a Football Governance Bill, which will establish an independent regulator to ensure financial sustainability of football clubs in England. We will never allow a closed league of select clubs to be siphoned off from the English football pyramid.”
On the football regulator, it does very much look like this will happen, not least as the Lib Dems also say they would establish “the promised new independent regulator, placing it on a statutory footing, and giving it the power to impose a fairer financial flow that rewards well-run clubs.”
The idea has cross-party support. We still don’t really know what powers it will actually have, but it looks like a regulator will happen. At some point.
But on the other firm pledge, what does “We will never allow a closed league of select clubs to be siphoned off from the English football pyramid” actually mean?
It hints at, but does not specify, legislation to make a breakaway illegal. Or does it? Would it only be illegal if the clubs involved left the English game to join a Super League, or would it be legal to join a Super League as long as those clubs also carried on playing domestically?
And what about Scotland? This suggests that Celtic and Rangers, for example, would not face any prospect of punishment if they went off and joined a Super League.
Moving on to the Liberal Democrats, they pledge to protect fans from being exploited by ticket touts “by implementing the Competition and Markets Authority’s recommendations to crack down on illegal ticket resale.”
Labour mention something similar without specifics.
The Lib Dems also say they will restrict gambling advertising. Separately from their pledge on a regulator, they say they would strengthen “the propriety test for prospective owners and directors by including human rights questions.”
Now that would be interesting.
They also say they would require all clubs “to have equality, diversity and inclusion action plans.” And they would “Expand the list of sporting fixtures which must have live free-to-air coverage to include more football matches as well as key international cricket, rugby, golf and tennis fixtures.”
Good luck with that! I can only see strong opposition from pretty much every governing body that makes money from pay-TV, and all the pay-TV providers.
Which just leaves the Green Party, who make three specific pledges in relation to sport, including investing £5bn “in community sports, arts and culture.” How that is divided up, or over what time frame is not stated.
They also say they will “allow access to school sports facilities by local clubs and teams outside teaching hours to ensure maximum use of a valuable resource.” And “permit local authorities to invest in shares in professional sports clubs which operate in their area as a means of maintaining a connection between the club and its community.”
The longer that England and Scotland remain at Euro 2024, the surer the odds that politicians of all hues will appear on TV and radio talking about the footie, like they care.
Do you want to know how much the five most popular parties care about all of sport, and not just football?
In manifesto documents totalling 102,795 words, just 699 words in total deal with sport, and only 267 of those could reasonably be said to constitute firm promises. And a chunk of those aren’t even possible.
Did you read the 8-part series that attempted to predict the outcome of Euro 2024? There was an introductory explainer. bere. Then a Group A detailed preview here. Then the same for Group B, Group C, Group D, Group E and Group F.
Then a conclusion here, inckuding a "wallchart" of how the event will play out, precisely.