With a lifetime in politics behind him, Charles Clarke, the former Labour cabinet minister, edited a book called The ‘Too Difficult’ Box about the problems politicians never get around to addressing because they are, well, just too difficult: drugs policy, welfare reform, sex work and so on. I wish to pitch a companion book called Policy Issues That Are Fantastically Obvious With Fantastically Obvious Solutions Which Everyone Appreciates But Still Somehow Never Get Fixed. The idea came to mind on Tuesday evening as I was giving a short speech at a House of Lords event.
This was the launch of the report by the Chiles Webster Batson commission on sport and low-income neighbourhoods. Webster is the broadcaster and campaigner Charlie Webster; Batson is Brendon Batson, pioneering footballer and, as it happens, one of my childhood heroes. Charlie and Brendon grew up in Sheffield and Walthamstow, east London, respectively, and have intense personal experience of the importance of sport in low-income communities.
