by Tom Bower
On 17 November 1999, Chris Smith and Kate Hoey were the guests of Ken Bates in the old Wembley stadium to watch England play Scotland. A verbal exchange at half-time plunged Wembley’s redevelopment into a spiral of disaster.
Relations between Bates and the politicians had sharply deteriorated over the previous weeks. At their meetings, Smith had been regularly embarrassed by Bates in front of his senior officials. ‘How will we expand the stadium from 80,000 to 90,000 spectators?’ asked Smith, expecting a technical explanation. ‘Just add another 10,000 seats,’ snorted Bates flippantly. The businessman refused to endear himself to Labour politicians. Hoey rejected Bates’s invitation for lunch to discuss her concerns. ‘Power-broker meals,’ said the junior minister, ‘mean hidden deals.’ The antagonism had gradually persuaded Smith that Bates’s plan for athletics was, as Kate Hoey argued, unsustainable. As the government was inclined to consider bidding for the Olympics after securing the football World Cup in 2006, Smith became nervous about Wembley’s suitability for athletics. He had become obsessed by the ‘duplicity’ of Derek Casey of Sport England. ‘We were meant to have the Stade de France at Wembley . . . Casey has failed us,’ grumbled Smith. ‘Wembley won’t give us a legacy,’ agreed Kate Hoey.
Bates’s harsh warning to Smith at Wembley on 17 November gave the advantage to Hoey. ‘Forget the “sight line”,’ said Bates, ‘and the platform and all your other objections. Your real problem is the warm-up track.’ Under Olympic rules, a minor stadium was required to be built close to the Olympic stadium for the athletes to use prior to the race. The only suitable site adjacent to Wembley was covered by industrial buildings. ‘You’d need to issue compulsory orders to clear the area,’ said Bates, knowing what thoughts had instantly been triggered in the politician’s mind: costs of about £20 million, the loss of jobs and land lying unused, possibly indefinitely, until an Olympic bid was accepted. Smith’s response was instant: ‘We’ve got to get athletics out of Wembley.’ Kate Hoey was delighted. ‘Yes!’ she said gleefully. By any measure, that exchange revealed the chaotic political management of the Wembley stadium. While the two politicians went into overdrive to calculate an effective exit from Wembley, neither pondered the discrepancy between paying £20 million for the extra land at Wembley and the £190 million necessary for a dedicated athletics track, possibly at Picketts Lock in north-east London, or the £4 billion price of the Olympics.
Chris Smith later explained his conversion against Wembley. ‘I didn’t realize the obvious before July 1999,’ he said, ‘that you can’t have a perfect football and athletics stadium.’ He blamed everyone for failing to explain that truism, not least Derek Casey who, he claimed, ‘ignored the fundamental incompatibility between football and athletics’. Just how the reconstruction of Wembley, the home of British football and praised by a parliamentary select committee as a venue for a major athletics competition, could have been derailed by the hypothetical notion of holding the Olympic Games in London was never explained. Not least, because in March 1999 Simon Clegg had told a parliamentary select committee that a British bid for the Olympics was not dependent on Wembley’s reconstruction. The only suitable site for the Olympics Clegg believed would be in east London. Nevertheless, Clegg had become outraged about how football’s billions had bought prestige and political patronage, an opinion shared by Kate Hoey. The junior minister was uninterested that the International Olympic Committee had denied Clegg’s criticism that the new stadium would be too small; and she ignored the scientific evidence that the ‘sight line’ of only very few spectators would be obstructed. Kate Hoey wanted to believe Clegg. Subsequently, his role would be condemned by a parliamentary committee for having ‘exercised an influence on the Wembley national stadium which has not been justified, an influence exercised ironically to the detriment of athletics’. But by then Clegg could claim victory.
On 1 December 1999, Chris Smith invited Derek Casey and Bob Stubbs to read the Ellerbe Becket report in the Houses of Parliament. Within just two weeks, the American consultants had been expected to examine 1,000 drawings and computer models. By their own admission, it had been an impossible task, but political necessity had smothered practicalities. Just thirty minutes after entering the room, Casey and Stubbs were told by an official that Smith was about to announce to the House of Commons that Ellerbe Becket had revealed ‘five serious problems’ for athletics at Wembley, especially the ‘sight lines’. The minister appeared willing to torpedo the FA’s project on the basis of a hastily commissioned consultant’s report. ‘I was shocked,’ recalled Stubbs, ‘that Smith used such a piece of work to justify a decision and say our plans were fundamentally flawed.’ Others dubbed Smith’s behaviour ‘madness’. Most assumed that the minister, unable to grasp the mathematical calculations, had panicked. Smith rejected that impression: ‘I believed that it was important to share my concerns with the House at the earliest moment. I’ve learned on the job. Is that a bad thing?’ Smith would be criticized by a parliamentary committee for confusion and inaccuracies, and by others for behaving ‘impulsively’ and ‘like a butterfly’.
On 22 December, Smith formally told the House of Commons that athletics would not be part of Wembley. Jubilant, Kate Hoey began campaigning for a dedicated athletics track at Picketts Lock in north-east London as the venue for the World Championships in 2005. Cast off, Wembley became a battleground between Westminster and football’s personalities. Bates was a common target.
In the collision of interests, Chris Smith, Tony Banks, James Purnell, Andy Burnham and even Alastair Campbell recognized that Labour’s policy for football had become ‘a mess’. Within just two years, their dream of reforming football was crumbling. ‘We’ve given full support for 2006, for Wembley and for an Olympic bid,’ complained one of the special advisers, ‘and all we’ve got in return is football discrediting us and the Task Force. It’s all one way. Football is in charge. We’ve made a mistake.’ Downing Street’s special adviser sensed uncertainty, even disorientation: ‘The FA’s in a mess, the Premier League is greedy and we haven’t achieved our manifesto commitments.’ The plans to distribute money from the Premier League to the grass roots and to create an independent regulator were unfulfilled. The government’s disillusion delighted football’s administrators. Their business was on the verge of an important victory: to be free of any interference.
8
THE FA: MASTERS OF DELUSION
The vitriol was blatant and mutual. Football’s aristocrats were contemptuous of their critics and, in return, were despised for demanding unconditional victory. The leaders of the Football Association and the Premier League were condemned by Lord Faulkner as ‘venal’ and ‘egoist’. In reply they damned Faulkner, the vice-chairman of the Football Trust, as ‘grubby’ and ‘unreliable’. In the middle were Labour ministers and their special advisers. Their battle was over the appointment of an independent regulator for football.
‘Surely it’s inconceivable that the government would allow itself to be blackmailed by the football authorities in this way?’ Richard Faulkner challenged Chris Smith. The Labour peer was outraged by the Premier League’s ultimatum to enfeeble the proposed regulator – ‘Should the government proceed with this weak and biased Establishment lapdog, it would be against the wishes of football supporters.’ Faulkner’s critics had good reason to fear independent scrutiny.
In March 2000, the battle to regulate football was reaching a climax. The astonishingly abusive acrimony had intensified after the warring factions on the Task Force failed to agree on a unanimous recommendation. Disagreements had become personalized after Richard Scudamore proposed an Independent Scrutiny Panel. ‘How will it work?’ asked Adam Brown, the academic. ‘I don’t know,’ replied Scudamore flippantly. ‘This is arrogant and ridiculously weak,’ countered Brown in dismay. ‘Scudamore is outrageous,’ declared Faulkner in September 1999. ‘He’s accelerating the polarization between the Premier League and the rest, damaging the national sport.’
Their sentiments towards Mike Lee, Scudamore’s consultant, were similar. ‘Mike Lee’s a nasty piece of work,’ cursed Adam Brown, suspecting that Lee had sought to ridicule the Task Force. An ‘anonymous’ insider had told the Daily Telegraph that a 64-page draft on ‘commercial issues’ ‘is riddled with embarrassing typing mistakes, factual errors and historical inaccuracies, and has so infuriated the football authorities that they intend to rewrite it from top to bottom’. Lee firmly denied his culpability, although he openly blamed David Mellor’s ‘confrontational and opinionated chairmanship’ of the Task Force for alienating the Professional Footballers Association, the Premier League and the FA. The Premier League chairmen, revealed Lee, were ‘fed up with Mellor’ and demanded that he should be ‘removed’. Lee complained that Mellor’s suggestion of a regulator with powers of investigation and expulsion, ‘would be like having cuckoos in the nest’.
David Mellor had also become disillusioned. Uniting the professional football organizations with the fans, he lamented, would have been ‘beyond the Archangel Gabriel’. Those involved in football, he sighed, quoting Dr Johnson, ‘are fair-minded people. They never speak well of each other.’ In particular, he was irritated by James Purnell. At recent meetings Downing Street’s special adviser had rarely spoken and refused to persuade football’s aristocrats to honour the process. ‘You’re willing to wound but not to strike,’ Mellor told Purnell, suspicious of a cosy deal between Downing Street and the football authorities. ‘You’re letting football off the hook.’
The mood had changed since Mellor’s appointment as chairman of the Task Force. Lee’s bombardment of Downing Street had been effective. Many Labour politicians who had accepted the invitations from the FA and Premier League to hospitality at the major football matches, especially at Wembley, had fallen for the argument that football was a sport, not a monopoly business that should be controlled by a Football Regulation Bill. Alastair Campbell’s will to challenge football’s aristocrats had diminished. The brokers of the retreat were James Purnell and Andy Burnham, recently appointed as Chris Smith’s special adviser.
Elements in this resistance to change were money and patronage. The money was to fund the new Football Foundation, inheriting the mantle of the Football Trust; and the patronage was the appointment of the chairman of the Foundation.
At the beginning of 1999, the Premier League had agreed to pay a levy on the income from Sky to support football in the community. The size of the levy had not been agreed and many, including Richard Scudamore, disliked the commitment. Informally, the Premier League threatened to withhold any money until the government excluded the notion of a regulator. A crisis meeting was convened on 16 December 1999 in Downing Street. James Purnell and Andy Burnham discussed the threat with Dave Richards and Mike Lee of the Premier League. In the midst of their argument, at Alastair Campbell’s request, Tony Blair passed through the room. The noise abated. The government, said the prime minister, would pay 5 per cent towards the Football Foundation if the Premier League agreed to the same. ‘OK,’ agreed Richards, committing the Premier League to contribute £80 million over three years. We’ve achieved the unthinkable, thought Burnham.
The next step, the appointment of the Foundation’s chairman, was a sensitive issue. Richard Faulkner, the vice-chairman of the Football Trust for eleven years, expected the position. His unexpected rival was Tom Pendry. By mid-1999, Pendry had become disillusioned with Westminster and decided to retire at the next election. He hoped to receive a peerage and the chairmanship of the Foundation as a reward for his services. Both required the approval of Tony Blair. The recommendation to the prime minister would be influenced by James Purnell who, coincidentally, was searching for a parliamentary seat. Conveniently, Pendry introduced Purnell to the committee of his own constituency of Stalybridge and Hyde. Pendry endorsed Purnell’s qualities. Soon after Purnell won the nomination, and Pendry was appointed the Foundation’s chairman. His office was located in the FA’s headquarters. Not surprisingly, he became antagonistic towards an independent regulator.
Pendry’s appointment infuriated Richard Faulkner, angry about his exclusion from any official position in football’s politics and by Pendry’s opposition towards a regulator. ‘I want,’ said Faulkner, ‘a wholly independent, powerful, permanent body able to scrutinize clubs directly and where necessary undertake investigations to ban offshore ownership like Chelsea’s.’ The football aristocrats criticized Faulkner for showing ‘naked hostility’. His ambition, it was whispered, was to be appointed the regulator.
The venom prevented the Task Force agreeing about a regulator. Pleas by Purnell and Burnham for a compromise failed. Two reports were written. One by the football authorities, a minority on the Task Force, promised an ‘Independent Scrutiny Panel’ without powers or sanctions; while the report of the majority, by Mellor, Faulkner and Brown, recommended an investigative regulator – an Independent Football Commission – who would be ‘independent of any direct involvement in the game’.
James Purnell was outrightly hostile to a regulator. In his report to Tony Blair, he mentioned how football ‘hated outsiders’ questioning, influencing or instructing them about their business. New Labour, he advised, should not be minded to antagonize the national sport by imposing a semi-independent regulator suggestive of a Soviet, nanny state. Instead, he suggested that the government should support self-regulation to change football’s culture. The message from Purnell to Chris Smith and Andy Burnham was blunt: ‘it is a delusion that football will ever be regulated by the government or an independent official digging deep’. The publication of two reports, an inevitable embarrassment, was compounded by the revolt of Kate Hoey.
On the evening of 21 December 1999, the day before publication of the reports, Kate Hoey called at David Mellor’s home. The reformers in the Task Force, Hoey believed, were Labour’s true allies. Confronting the football establishment over the appointment of an independent regulator was the cornerstone of purging football of over-commercialization and corruption. She disparaged Chris Smith, her superior minister, as indecisive, without any understanding or qualifications to challenge the football authorities. ‘He’s all over the place, only interested in himself, loves worship, and is anxious to please Blair,’ she complained. The presence of Andy Burnham, a passionate football supporter, within her department inflamed Kate Hoey’s suspicions. Once, frustrated by Hoey’s ‘unhelpfulness’, James Purnell had sought to change her mind by arranging a telephone call to her from Anji Hunter, the prime minister’s personal assistant, to confirm: ‘This is what the PM thinks.’ The admonition had failed. That night, against her own government, Hoey encouraged Mellor’s campaign for an independent regulator.
The following day, 22 December 1999, Kate Hoey did not attend the launch of the reports at the Atrium in the Millbank Tower, near Westminster. ‘She just refused to come. Not her baby,’ sniped Purnell about a woman criticized as a non-team-player. Hoey’s absence confirmed that the government had shifted away from the fans. ‘A sorry state of affairs,’ sighed David Mellor, aggrieved that no one even bothered at the end to thank him for his work. In that surreal atmosphere, Purnell and Burnham promoted the FA’s ‘minority report’ as ‘progress’ while dismissing the ‘majority report’ as ‘recommendations by other members’. As journalists moved forward to interview Mellor and Brown about the split, Mike Lee intervened to give the ‘official’ version. Lee knew the battle was nearly won. Sidelining Mellor had been an important victory for the football aristocrats. But Lee’s celebration was premature.
The counter-attack was launched on 1 March 2000. Adam Brown and ten others wrote to Tony Blair urging the government to appoint an independent regulator as recommended by the majority report. Blair’s reply was to be delivered by Chris Smith, who in turn consulted Richard Scudamore. Downing Street’s desire to satisfy the football authorities would be met by Scudamore’s proposals. The sport, said Scudamore, on 16 March, would only support an Independent Football Commissi
on (IFC) appointed by the Premier League and Football Association. But, according to some, he pledged not to veto any candidate for chairmanship associated with the Task Force. Smith agreed that was ideal. ‘The supporters won’t like this,’ protested Adam Brown. ‘I’m not interested in the supporters,’ replied Chris Smith.
Chris Smith’s public announcement in April 2000 endorsed Scudamore’s blueprint for a regulator. As window-dressing, Smith emphasized the IFC’s purpose to improve football’s ‘transparency and accountability’, to reduce the costs of tickets and to control merchandising. Deftly, the politician glossed over the proposed regulator’s impotence – his lack of authority to undertake investigations or impose sanctions. The majority faction in the Task Force prepared to retaliate in the final battle: the nomination of the IFC’s chairman. Their last attempt to impose controls on the football business depended upon that appointment.
Richard Faulkner offered himself as a candidate. To his admirers, he was a man who ‘tried to do the right thing’. On 5 April 2000, Adam Crozier, the new chief executive of the FA, and Richard Scudamore promised Faulkner that neither would veto his selection or even seek to influence the appointment. That appeared to confirm Scudamore’s pledge to ministers three weeks earlier. With that ‘welcome’ assurance, Faulkner bubbled to Kate Hoey that his selection was guaranteed due to ‘my excellent relationship with Adam Crozier’.
