Sports Books Blog

This blog, as my regular reader will know, does not stray into politics. We have a pop at the BBC now and then and we rail against all sorts of things. But politics, that’s a little too fraught.

But we can’t help but be swept up in the excitement of the US election. The US is the most casually racist country I have ever come across. I remember being shocked at attitudes in Atlanta during the Olympics of 1996 and I’m a cynical ex-journalist, a breed not known for sensitivity. So for the country to elect a black man to the presidency is astonishing. I am of a generation that can remember black people being killed in the US for daring to stand up for their rights. Segregation happened in my lifetime.

It made me wonder if we could we elect a black prime minister over here. Could we elect people because of their character rather than their background or colour? Sadly I doubt it will happen in my life time. The British class system and all the checks, both crass and subtle, which keep it in place will not easily be swept aside.

Look at what’s happening at the moment. The Tories are run by two people from the upper middle-class. Boris Johnson is mayor of London even though he and Tory leader David Cameron, also an Old Etonian, and shadow chancellor George Osborne, of St Pauls public school, belonged to the Bullingdon club at university, an establishment which believed it was OK to trash a restaurant as long as you could pay for the damage. And these people feel they are in such an invulnerable position that they can constantly rubbish Britain.

I used to think, as in the US, that the UK was progressing, that things were getting more equal and then a grinning used car salesman hijacked the Labour party and the great wave of enthusiasm from 1997 (much like that in the US at the moment) was dashed upon rocks of disappointment. Things aren’t getting better; with Cameron, Osborne and Johnson we are regressing.

The US may be becoming more equal; in the UK things are getting less equal.

I suppose there is one good thing that’s just happened. We have a black formula 1 champion and he’s British. Now I couldn’t see that happening 20 years ago.

Lewis Hamilton clearly is an exceptional young man – perhaps he could be prime minister one day! He can afford to go into politics now.