Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

I think in the UK it depends on who organised the sport/what basis it was organised on.

In football it was organised by separate, national FAs and they actually had different national styles (Scotland, famously, invented passing).

While for the Olympics and I think athletics in general it was always done on a UK basis so if your sport's main event is the Olympics, it's probably UK wide? I just checked and it's still a UK organisation and team for ice hockey.

[Threviel]

And also, to be pedantic, the FIFA world cup is not contested by nations but by football associations, traditionally they are ordered by national borders, but nothing that I am aware of really requires them to be that way.

I think they way the UK does it is completely bonkers in a non-sporting way, by having the national components compete on their own it only fosters local nationalism and internal division. The audience identifies with the component part (England, Wales and so on) rather than the whole. I'd wager that the independence movements would have been far smaller or non-existant if team GB competed in the big sports.

[Josquius]

As mentioned its purely due to accident of history and the UK being grandfathered in.
These sports were invented in England and spread to other bits of the UK long before they did elsewhere. At some point it was decided it'd be fun to do international games so they did amongst themselves and did this for many years before international teams formed abroad- and then it was a long time after that before the British teams would recognise the international teams as even worthy of notice.
More of a big deal worth noting is the massive power that the British FAs hold over the rules of football. When the UK football world and the global football world came together it was quite the merging of equals rather than one nation joining everyone else.

It is true that its curious how Wales ended up with its team despite Wales being quite firmly part of England at the time and this being especially so in the minds of the sorts of elites doing these international matches. I suspect its something to do with how we have a prince of wales left behind a memory that Wales once was a nation and rule of cool/desire for another international gave it a team?
It is in a way odd that this happened but we didn't see say a Yorkshire or general northern team- I can imagine this would have been proposed at some point and left the south running scared given the strength and commonness of the pro game in the north vs. the south's posh amateurs.

[Sheilbh]

And also, to be pedantic, the FIFA world cup is not contested by nations but by football associations, traditionally they are ordered by national borders, but nothing that I am aware of really requires them to be that way.

That makes sense and I suppose it's the way that technically all these international competitions aren't "political". They're not technically organised by nations, it's a competition between governing bodies. That's what allows the IOC or FIFA to say "keep politics out of sport" (while it has, of course, always been political).

I think they way the UK does it is completely bonkers in a non-sporting way, by having the national components compete on their own it only fosters local nationalism and internal division. The audience identifies with the component part (England, Wales and so on) rather than the whole. I'd wager that the independence movements would have been far smaller or non-existant if team GB competed in the big sports.

It's funny I was just thinking the exact opposite and that without the national federations we may already have blown apart the union. Mainly because England is so much bigger, it's got the bigger, richer professional league etc. I think a lot of problems with the union and ways of fixing it come back to the problem that England is 85-90% of the population.

There are large periods when Scotland, especially, had a lot of very good players - but it's also not impossible to imagine a fully English team "representing" the UK. I'm not sure that would cohere everyone behind the UK and away from their national identities, my sense is it would just cause quite a lot of resentment at the lack of a Scotland or Wales team to cheer and lack of identity with an England dominated UK team.

It is true that its curious how Wales ended up with its team despite Wales being quite firmly part of England at the time and this being especially so in the minds of the sorts of elites doing these international matches. I suspect its something to do with how we have a prince of wales left behind a memory that Wales once was a nation and rule of cool/desire for another international gave it a team?

I think it's because international sport is tied up with language revival, democratic movements, nationalism across Europe - and that includes the UK. So in the same as you have the Gaelic League in Ireland and GAA at the same time. You have the FAW organising football and lots of conversations around the need to preserve Welsh and create a political expression of protecting Welsh language and nationalism.

It is in a way odd that this happened but we didn't see say a Yorkshire or general northern team- I can imagine this would have been proposed at some point and left the south running scared given the strength and commonness of the pro game in the north vs. the south's posh amateurs.

I think it's the problem that you have with all reforms of governance in the UK. There are sense of North and South, but the organising units people tend to have a connection with are still either counties or England. Other divisions - like the "regions" are more seen as artificial inventions.

I always think of that clip from the 30s of Dixie Dean toasting the FA Cup being in Lancashire

I am glad that both major parties agree that the real problem is that this island isn't isolated enough from the rest of the world.

I think this is a mis-step from Starmer and I think it reflects the fact that there are so many New Labour greybeards advising him.

In reality legal migration is as high as it's ever been and is projected to continue at that level. Both parties are basically triangulating on immigration in broadly a similar way. In policy both are saying they want a fairly flexible and pragmatic approach to migration with no actual target to bring numbers down (the Tories have said they have a "goal" to reduce net migration to pre-pandemic levels, so from net +250k to net +200k). The trade off is that Sunak says reducing/controlling illegal immigration is necessary for "consent" to migration levels at their current level, while Starmer basically says any changes to the system will be tied to conditions on business to increase investment in skills.

But I think for Labour especially most of its voters and its potential voters are either liberals or "balancers" on migration. This feels like it could go a bit like Ed Miliband's "Controls on Immigration" mugs - that they neither convince people who are their target audience but put off more liberal voters. And I think that's higher risk now (it might not matter because I basically think this government's done) because opinions on migration have really shifted in the last ten years, but almost everyone senior in politics (especially Starmer's New Labour advisers) came up at a time when there was far stronger hostility to migration.

[Josquius]

I don't know. Promising to work towards high wage economy, weaning the UK off immigration, etc...  does seem quite sensible. It doesn't necessarily mean pulling up the drawbridge ASAP (wait we already did that...err...putting crocodiles in the moat).

But yes. It is true those who get their pants in a twist about immigration are never going to believe Labour no matter what. Nonetheless I do think there's a sizable chunk of the population who have these daily mail concerns to a smaller and more sensible level and merely seeing the right words being chucked around with regards to it can check that box in their mind and leave them open to decide who to vote for based on sensible issues.

I think it's because international sport is tied up with language revival, democratic movements, nationalism across Europe - and that includes the UK. So in the same as you have the Gaelic League in Ireland and GAA at the same time. You have the FAW organising football and lots of conversations around the need to preserve Welsh and create a political expression of protecting Welsh language and nationalism.

Was this really the case however?
I'm no expert in the history of Welsh football but the origins of the national team do seem to be born out of the Anglicised segments of the population.

[Threviel]

I think they way the UK does it is completely bonkers in a non-sporting way, by having the national components compete on their own it only fosters local nationalism and internal division. The audience identifies with the component part (England, Wales and so on) rather than the whole. I'd wager that the independence movements would have been far smaller or non-existant if team GB competed in the big sports.

It's funny I was just thinking the exact opposite and that without the national federations we may already have blown apart the union. Mainly because England is so much bigger, it's got the bigger, richer professional league etc. I think a lot of problems with the union and ways of fixing it come back to the problem that England is 85-90% of the population.

There are large periods when Scotland, especially, had a lot of very good players - but it's also not impossible to imagine a fully English team "representing" the UK. I'm not sure that would cohere everyone behind the UK and away from their national identities, my sense is it would just cause quite a lot of resentment at the lack of a Scotland or Wales team to cheer and lack of identity with an England dominated UK team.

I'm a foreigner so I'm most likely talking out of my ass. As far as I'm aware local nationalism was a non-issue until very recently, so local football teams is obviously not what causes local nationalism. But I can't help thinking that it matters in some way. Just look at this photo from '66:
compared to this from 2006:


So something has changed, whether football audience is cause or effect I can't say.

And I believe if there had only ever been a team GB the inclusion of Scots or Irish would not have become an issue. The big Scottish and Irish teams would be in the league system also.

[Threviel]

Heh, by chance I got the picture from an article discussing how football fuels English nationalism.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/oct/23/-sp-how-england-football-team-came-embody-englishness

[Duque de Bragança]

compared to this from 2006:


So something has changed, whether football audience is cause or effect I can't say.

Yeah, they eventually the good flag, the England one not Great Britain. 

And I believe if there had only ever been a team GB the inclusion of Scots or Irish would not have become an issue. The big Scottish and Irish teams would be in the league system also.

There is a GB Olympic team. Ireland is united rugby union-wise, not in association football.

[Threviel]

We can't know of course but I imagine that separate Catalonian and Basque national teams would not have decreased local nationalism in Spain. Especially after Catalonia wins all those cups.

For football as a sport I think it's excellent with local teams, for the United Kingdom as a nation it's probably a net negative.

[The Larch]

We can't know of course but I imagine that separate Catalonian and Basque national teams would not have decreased local nationalism in Spain. Especially after Catalonia wins all those cups.

It's been a long standing nationalist cause in the Spanish regions with their own regional identity to allow them to have their own national teams for international sporting competitions. The original cause was not about football but, IIRC, surfing, because the Basque surfing federation predated the Spanish one, and they wanted to have their own team because of that, but obviously having their own football team is the big prize. There were talks recently about reforming the sport laws that could allow for that but I don't what came of it.

In which sports does the UK have its constituent countries play separetely? I know about football and rugby, with the "oddity" of the Irish national rugby team representing the whole island, both the Republic and N. Ireland, but what about other sports? Cricket, maybe?

[Gups]

We can't know of course but I imagine that separate Catalonian and Basque national teams would not have decreased local nationalism in Spain. Especially after Catalonia wins all those cups.

It's been a long standing nationalist cause in the Spanish regions with their own regional identity to allow them to have their own national teams for international sporting competitions. The original cause was not about football but, IIRC, surfing, because the Basque surfing federation predated the Spanish one, and they wanted to have their own team because of that, but obviously having their own football team is the big prize. There were talks recently about reforming the sport laws that could allow for that but I don't what came of it.

In which sports does the UK have its constituent countries play separetely? I know about football and rugby, with the "oddity" of the Irish national rugby team representing the whole island, both the Republic and N. Ireland, but what about other sports? Cricket, maybe?

There are Scottish and Irish (united) cricket teams but not a separate Welsh team (they play as part of England) save that Glamorgon is a county team and there is a Welsh team in the stupid 100 competition.

Rugby league also has separate teams but none apart from England are very good.

I can't think of any other team sports which are of any realy significance here. On googling, it appears that the basketball teams were merged into a single GB team.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Right--the German States, at least some of them, have a much stronger "logical" argument because they didn't technically get merged into a truly united Germany until after WWI.

What do you refer to? Germany had a federal structure since the 1867 NGF constitution. That established the competences of member states and the federal government, which has been adjusted many times since, but in principle is still the same. And of course goes back to the HRE constitution. 

The only time Germany was a centralized state without remaining powers on the state level was after the Gleichschaltung in late 1933. That ended with the postwar order established by the Allies in 1945.

The constituent States of the German Empire still retained their own monarchs until after WWI, which IMO is a substantially stronger claim to being a separate entity than you have in Wales / Scotland. The Kaiser was also the Kaiser explicitly by virtue of being the King of Prussia, which again somewhat emphasizes the still distinct entities and the nature of the Empire.

Certain even if you want to argue 1867, that is still 160 years more recent than Scotland's latest reasonable claim of being a separate country—and 500 years more recent than Wales.

[Syt]

Merry Christmas!

[Sheilbh]

So something has changed, whether football audience is cause or effect I can't say.

I agree - but I think the first picture is more of an issue. They are cheering on the England team but using the flag and symbols of Britain. That conflation was fairly common in the 19th/early 20th century (ie empire) and you still get it abroad. As that article notes, a great Scottish player called 1966 "the blackest day of my life" - but they're flying what is also supposed to be his flag.

The issue I have with it is what it means for Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish identities. If Englishness = Britishness then it crowds out the other nations in the UK. Either they need to assimilate into an English identity which is the same as Britishness, or there is no space for Scottishness within Britishness. A multi-national nation means that one of those nation's needs to be England as itself not stealing our shared identity as a costume.

My heritage is more or less entirely Irish (of the Catholic, nationalist variety) and I grew up in Scotland. Growing up I remember how annoying it is when people refer to "England" when they mean the UK. I still have huge issues with the English team using the British national anthem, or the way British TV covers the England team (though they are getting better at this). Similarly I'm a bit uncomfortable with Prince William being patron of the FA.

I think without the space for cultural and sporting expressions of Scottish and Welsh identity - which means that England needs to be England, as uncomfortable as some people find that - you'd force the question of the union a lot more strongly and probably a lot earlier. And I think sporting fans get it - the idea that they wave Scottish or English flags for one tournament and then change shirt into Team GB ones for the next. That's part of living in a multi-national state that I think sporting fans actually possibly get a little more than people who are snobbish about sport.

The David Goldblatt piece is interesting and I think really true at the way that English identity has, in large part, developed through football - I recommend Sunder Katwala on this who has written a lot about sports and identity, including, recently, England as a "ninety minute nation" (it is, after all, the only nation in the UK without any "national" institutions). But that also used to be a phrase to describe Scotland when, pre-devolution, the football team carried a lot of the weight of national identity - I think that's now broadened.

Was this really the case however?
I'm no expert in the history of Welsh football but the origins of the national team do seem to be born out of the Anglicised segments of the population.

Nor am I but I just had a look and the father of Welsh football was apparently Llewelyn Kenrick of the Ruabon Druids which sounds fairly Welsh

I don't think it's the same - but there are similarities. So in Ireland nationalism was far stronger.

But I think in both cases there was a fear of Anglicisation - and possibly in Wales that's partly driven, as you say, by the most Anglicised bits of the country which is in the mining and heavy industry hubs. It makes sense to me that you'd want to promote Wales in the areas and hobbies of the bits that are most changing. Nationalism is far stronger in Ireland so you have the GAA and explicit bans on participating in or even watching English games, in Wales it's tying those changing industrial centres into Welshness even if it isn't the same as rural, Welsh-speaking Wales or middle class revivalist Eisteddfod attendees.

Merry Christmas!

Again I'm on my own here but MPs are employers and should be able to take their team on a Christmas do expensed to the company like everyone else (within reason).

I hate this attitude in this country - and I just think it's a huge problem that the cost of staff for MPs is recorded as an expense by them rather than thinking MPs should have good, relatively well-paid teams to support them

It reminds me of the outrage over civil servants "spending" hundreds of thousands of pounds on takeaways during, say, covid or the financial crisis. Which is because loads of them in the Department of Health or the Treasury or whatever are having to work late so they're expensing their dinner - exactly like any other professional.

[OttoVonBismarck]

My heritage is more or less entirely Irish (of the Catholic, nationalist variety) and I grew up in Scotland. Growing up I remember how annoying it is when people refer to "England" when they mean the UK. I still have huge issues with the English team using the British national anthem, or the way British TV covers the England team (though they are getting better at this). Similarly I'm a bit uncomfortable with Prince William being patron of the FA.

The funny thing is, it is common in my experience for Brits to get pedantic or snippy when an outsider accidentally refers to "England", often times in the context of saying something like "Queen of England" or referring to the whole UK as England. But the country does itself no favors in making it clear to foreigners when it tries to promote the idea that it's all "Britain" but then fields confusing teams in international sport where most observers casually assume each team represents a distinct and separate country.