When labour took office in 1997 we heard a great deal about the interest in football of the “regular guys” now in power. Four years on, Labour politicians don’t talk so much about football any more. However, in office they have been the game’s devoted servants.
Governments have always gone out of their way for football, but this one is friendlier than most. At the EU’s Nice summit Tony Blair and Gerhard Schr?der broke off from discussing qualified majority voting to persuade the European Commission not to abolish football transfer fees, because of their importance to smaller clubs.
The antiquated football transfer system had seemed doomed. It allowed a club to charge an unlimited fee to any other club wanting to sign one of its players, as long as that player had an ongoing contract. It would be hard to think of a system more opposed to free movement of labour, a basic principle of the EU. In any case the role of transfer fees in small clubs should be about as economically important to Labour as the importance of prompt deliveries of newspapers to Leeds newsagents.
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