Sport Matters

This evening David Cameron is to announce future Conservative Party policy on sport. At the weekend, he described sport as “Vital to our sense of belonging and national identity”. He is right. When John Major introduced the Lottery in the mid 1990s, he did so to improve funding of sports, arts, heritage and charities. In 1998, the Labour government announced that Lottery funds were also going to be used for other social needs, thereby reducing funds available for sport. Last year alone saw a cut in sports funding to one third of that provided in 1996. And this is at a time when we are hoping to assemble the best ever British Olympic Team for the 2012 Games in London, our cricket team has under-achieved at the World Cup and our football and rugby teams are failing to inspire. Should we (in Catherine Tate terms) be bothered by all this? I think we should be.

Sport matters for so many reasons. It matters because it instills confidence in our young. It matters because it improves people’s fitness. Above all, it matters because this country and its people come together to share in the ‘ups and downs’ of our sporting teams and heroes in a way that helps define our national identity. At a time when we are wrestling with what constitutes being British, sport allows us all to be patriotic, to share being British with each other. For that reason alone, David Cameron is right to give greater priority to supporting sport in a future Conservative manifesto.