Jowell’s warning to SNP ‘don’t politicise games’

Former Culture Secretary worried that Salmond will try to ‘hijack’ next year’s Commonwealth Games.

Exactly a year after Super Saturday delivered six gold medals and lit up last year’s Olympic Games, the woman who played a key role in delivering the event is in no mood for nostalgia.

Dame Tessa Jowell is looking to the future.

She’s worried the Games legacy, key to the bid that won London the right to host the Games, is being squandered by a penny-pinching Coalition Government.

And she’s concerned that Alex Salmond and the Scottish Nationalists will try to hijack next year’s Commonwealth Games in London, due to take place just weeks before the independence referendum.

As Culture Secretary, Jowell was vital in persuading then Prime Minister Tony Blair to bid for the Olympics and, while Labour were in power, she retained responsibility for delivering the Games.

When the Olympic flame was finally lit in London she took up a two-week stint as mayor of the Olympic Village.

She smiled: “Some of my best Olympic memories were getting up very early in the morning and going out shortly after 6am.

“Outside my block would be Mo Farah with his hood up, headphones on, getting warmed up.

“The first time I saw the meadow planting in the Olympic park, it moved me to tears because it was such a statement of how this contaminated piece of wasteland had been regenerated.”

The government’s legacy promise was to inspire a generation to take up sport. That’s concerning Jowell now despite enjoying last weekend’s Anniversary Games in the Olympic Stadium.

She explained: “We can allow ourselves a weekend of nostalgia and it’s true there are memories we will all hold for ever, but nostalgia’s not enough. Legacy now has to be about the future, not the past.”

Shortly after taking power the Coalition government slashed school sports funding only for Education Secretary Michael Gove to reinstate some money in the face of an outcry.

Explained Jowell: “Michael Gove’s decision to remove the dedicated funding from school sport less than two years before the Games was incomprehensible.

“If you’re looking at the long-term costs of childhood obesity and underachievement versus the benefits of raising a generation of young people who are purposefully engaged with sport and feel proud about themselves, the maths of that doesn’t take very long to work out.

“Getting kids active is much cheaper than treating their diabetes, for example.”

Jowell has issued an invitation to the Government to set up a cross-party group to establish a 10-year plan to give sports and their governing bodies across the UK stability and certainty about funding.

The Olympics was delivered through cross party co-operation, but how likely are the Coalition to take her up on her offer to secure the legacy?

Jowell is steely: “I wouldn’t waste my breath saying this is what we should do if I thought they were going to turn it down out of hand.”

Having undoubtedly missed the boat in the aftermath of last summer’s Olympics, the one-year anniversary offers a clear opportunity to engage young people in sport.

Another chance arrives next summer when the Commonwealth Games come to Glasgow.

Jowell added: “I hope that, just as so many people in Scotland were lit up by the Olympics, people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will feel lit up by the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

“It’s all set to be the most fantastic celebration.”

However she’s warned nationalists off trying to politicise an event that, unlike the Olympics, will see the Home Nations compete under their own flags just before the official independence referendum campaign period begins.

She said: “I suspect nationalist politicians may try to blend the two events, which would be a mistake. The Scottish people will not want their Games politicised, they’ll want them to be a showcase to the world.

“Alex Salmond knows what it’s like to be booed. If he tries to put his big clod-hopping feet into sport and politicise it he’ll get exactly the same reaction.”