The European Broadcasting Union, which organises Eurovision, is like the European Central Bank: whenever it’s called upon to make an important decision, you can always rely upon it to make the wrong one, and it’s wholly dependent on the mixture of goodwill and inertia that leads the international community not to go on about it. Its bet is a generalised feeling of “Oh well, it made the wrong call again. Never mind. Better luck next year/next global financial crisis”, and it’s one that mainly pays off. This time tomorrow we’ll have forgotten that it wouldn’t let Volodymyr Zelenskiy address the contest, in lieu of Ukraine hosting it, because it didn’t want the event politicised. So I just want to pause for one second to remark how dumb that was.
Inevitably, Ukraine was all anyone was talking about: it was the surtext and subtext, from the opening song, Stefania by the Kalush Orchestra, last year’s Ukrainian winners, to the rousing centre, a rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone sung by the Netherlands’ Duncan Laurence and also everyone else. The war was lambasted from every angle, while Putin responded to his pariah status by shelling the home town of Ukraine’s entrants, Tvorchi, with the fabulous vindictiveness of an uninvited fairy godmother. To think that by keeping a lid on Ukraine’s president the night could somehow float above world events was laughable: it was a four-hour anti-war protest, with extra neon.
