Gunner Net - articles - New Labour, new Arsenal

Is our country being run by a band of gooners?

According to the Duke of Wellington the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. When New Labour fights for its second term of office in 2002, its leaders may well look to the playing fields at Highbury and the leadership of Arsene Wenger for their inspiration. A recent report in the Guardian (March 1st 1999) traced the influence of football on world politics. The former socialist Prime Minister, Harold Wilson claimed that England only wins world cups under a Labour administration, presuming a greater-than-chance association between the two phenomena! It appears that the Number 10 Downing Street Policy Unit, where most of Tony Blair`s ideas and are forged, is a hotbed of Arsenal supporters. Its head, David Miliband, a season ticket holder, as is the media analyst Peter Hyman. Miliband also runs the unit football team, ironically named Demon Eyes, after the unsuccesful Tory smear campaign featuring Tony`s demonic pupils. So keen is Miliband on the game that he began his wedding day with a kickabout in Highbury Fields.

Which brings us to Islington, and the geography of football and politics. The swinging 60s saw Chelsea in the ascendant in the dying days of McMillan`s Tory Government. With Wilson in power, things swung North - Huyton returned their Prime Minister with a crashing majority, and Liverpool triumphed in Europe. The Thatcher years saw business take over the game - footballer`s salaries skyrocketed, while their clubs abandoned their cloth-cap image and slid into the stockmarket, mobile phones zinging. John Smith and Gordon Brown were passionate about their football - north of the border, with big-fish-in-small-pond Rangers clocking up yet another boring victory. Then came Blair, rising irresistably to power from the heartland of gentrification -- Islington, once a bastion of working class London and dyehard Arsenal support, now the home of the bourgeoisie, the epitome of champagne socialism. So the Labour men flocked to Highbury, with their smart Marks suits, lean and hungy faces, and their mission to use their brainpower for the benefit of the masses. And who better to symbolise that winning combination of craft and common sense than Arsenal`s manager, utterly composed, focussed, successful and logical, looking for all the world like a professor who somehow got lost on his way to his laboratory bench?

New Labour is in fact built on solid foundations of John Prescott`s Old Labour, embodying traditional working class values of solidarity and equality. On this secure base Blair is attempting to create a European-style Social Democracy. The parallel with Wenger`s Arsenal is uncanny. The English back four, not as young as they were, but irreplacable in their grit and mutual support, keep the clean sheets. In front of them are deployed the more contemporary skills of the continental midfield and strikers. As Blair`s popularity begins to slip a bit he might well look to Wenger for advice. What the cabinet really needs right now is a new striker. Pity Blair can`t look abroad - there is some tasty talent out there. Oh well, roll on the United States of Europe. Wenger would make a great foreign secretary - and, excuse me Mr Prescott - ever though of football management?

JA

Thank you to Jeremy Anderson for this article.

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