THERE are plenty of things wrong with this country.
Our schools, trains and courts are underperforming.
Many civil servants have not bothered to return to the office. Our healthcare system is pitied around Europe.
But our football leagues are world-beating.
No foreign equivalent comes close to the popularity of the Premier League, which is watched by an incredible two billion people all over the world.
Indeed, not only is the Premier League the most popular in the world; the lower tier English Football League is sixth.
Why tinker with what is working well? Why regulate something that, without regulation, has become England’s most popular export?
The Football Governance Bill, currently in its final stage in Parliament, is a textbook example of needless and meddlesome regulation by politicians wanting to flaunt their man-of-the-people credentials.
Price of failure
It is a non-solution to a non-problem which is bound to have unintended consequences.
MPs are using a sledgehammer to miss a nut.
The new law will create a new regulator with 250 staff. (So much for Keir Starmer’s claim that we should focus on growth.)
Those staff will be able to tell clubs where they play, in what strip and on what terms.
They will even be able to commandeer some of their assets to give to other clubs.
This is more shocking than people realise.
It won’t be long before the state is telling clubs what they must do in terms of gender quotas, Net Zero, ticket prices — you name it.
It is one thing for successful clubs to make voluntary “parachute payments” to those facing relegation. It is quite another for the Government to help itself to their cash.
Regulators never offer to reduce their role. They always want more power.
It won’t be long before the state is telling clubs what they must do in terms of gender quotas, Net Zero, ticket prices — you name it.
To what problem is this measure a solution?
Are our clubs facing ruin? Far from it.
The taxes they generate are bigger than the employer National Insurance rise, the extension of VAT, the farm estate tax and the scrapping of Winter Fuel Payments combined.
English clubs are successful precisely because the price of failure is high.
Two events are cited by supporters of the law.
One did not happen at all and the other was much less of a problem than is claimed.
The one that did not happen was the proposal for a European Super League in 2021, a breakaway group of 20 top clubs, six of them English.
Among other things, it is now proposed that clubs should monitor the diversity of their season ticket holders.
There was a backlash, and the idea was dropped within weeks.
But not before MPs had jumped on the Something Must Be Done bandwagon.
The one that did happen was the bankruptcy of Bury FC, which was traumatic for many in the town.
But Bury is still playing at the same ground and in the same colours — albeit as a new legal entity that must work its way back up from the lower leagues.
All that happened without any regulator. Indeed, of all the teams that were in the Football League in the Sixties, not one has disappeared.
Is one case really enough to justify handing control to the government? Apparently so.
The financial collapse of Rangers in 2012 might seem a bigger deal but Scotland is outside the scope of this Bill and, in any case, the Gers have also climbed back.
The legislation started life under the Conservatives, and has been beefed up by Labour since the election.
Create problems
Among other things, it is now proposed that clubs should monitor the diversity of their season ticket holders.
Of course it is. This is how all regulators operate.
They start with a limited role — in this case, stopping the financial collapse of a club — and end up extending their powers across the board.
Let me make a prediction.
This regulation will fail in its own terms, creating more problems than it solves.
If MPs think that fans are angry now about the occasional rogue proprietor, just wait until they see the relative decline of English football and turn their anger, not against the occasional absentee owner, but against the politicians who foisted the system on them.
The worst sequence in politics goes like this: “Something must be done. This is something. Let’s do this.”
Politicians were bad at operating trains, building cars and installing telephones.
What makes them think they’ll be any better at running football?
