Yes please, Prime Minister

	Surely the priority, if you really do insist on flinging money at sport, should be with those who truly make us feel proud, or at least better © Getty Images

Dear Gordon,

I know you’ve been having a tough time since moving from No.11 to No.10, what with all the economic worries, the cash-for-gongs saga, record levels of dissatisfaction with your premiership and that curious-looking Milliband chap sniffing your throne, so I’m not entirely surprised to see you taking such pleasure in the performance of all those “Team GB” cyclists, oarsmen and sailors in Beijing. However, I don’t think it would be fair on you to let you get too carried away. Which is why I am here to set you straight.

"Success in rowing, sailing and track cycling can essentially be bought by siphoning off money from the public purse and handing it to the athletes who are then able to train like professionals ... Success in sport - like in the agricultural market - is easier when it receives huge state subsidies." So wrote Matthew Syed, a former Olympian, in The Times the other day. OK, so he was a ping-ponger, out for himself from first bobbled serve to final fluffed smash, but the point remains. If you really want to give yourself a worthwhile goal, let’s see what you can do about our regular national teams, notably the lot who endeavour to play cricket.

To be honest, and I reckon most of your subjects would back me up, I would far prefer our soccer-rockers, rugger-buggers and willow-wielders win a few more games than a ragtag collection of largely university and/or public school types bring home more golds in more unwatchable sports than China and the US combined from a quadrennial event that costs more to stage than the GDP of Southern Africa. If you are tempted to believe I am one of those people who regard the “winning” of the right to stage the 2012 Olympics to be something of a costly and catastrophic defeat, I will not take offence.

As Ed Smith, the most literate county captain since Mike Brearley, pointed out in The Guardian, nearly 60% of Britain's medallists at Athens in 2004 went to independent schools. “Chasing cherry-picked Olympic dreams in which the winners are the privileged, cynics say, is a misappropriation of the public purse,” he wrote. “After 11 years of New Labour, British sport seems less meritocratic than ever.” I’ll second that emotion, and third it.

Surely the priority, if you really do insist on flinging money at sport, should be with those who truly make us feel proud, or at least better. And since team sports remain the last refuge for semi-selfless endeavour and true collectivism, and since you did used to be something of a leftie, that priority should probably lie with soccer, rugby union and cricket, each of them a nourishing crust in our daily bread. That said, soccer doesn’t deserve it (fancy putting club before country!) and rugby union doesn’t need it, so that leaves cricket.

I realise that, being Scottish, all this might mean less than nothing to you. Even if it does, you’re probably still peeved at the way Douglas Jardine, Mike Denness and Gavin Hamilton were treated by the selectors. But have you forgotten? Labour won the 2005 General Election on the back of an Ashes triumph. If you want to take your subjects’ minds off the property crash, not to mention secure a second term, you wait and see how feelgood the feelgood factor is when the urn is regained next summer. Mark my words – calling a snap election for early September will pay dividends.

Of course, simply chucking millions at causes, however worthy, isn’t necessarily the answer. It depends on how you chuck ’em. Have a look at the upper echelons of the current county averages (you’ll have to go online; the papers can’t be bothered printing them anymore) and note all those Africans, Aussies and non-Flying Dutchmen. And the reason for that, once more, is privilege. Which brings us to your beloved school system.

You and your party are forever blathering on about broadening educational opportunity, and the need to give half the country a university degree (given the plummeting standards of literacy and numeracy in secondary schools, the latter was not, on reflection, the cleverest idea, but hey, you can blame that on your old mate Tony B). But what kind of a country sells off most of its playing fields for supermarket development? Unless your parents can afford to pay by the barrowload for your education, the chances of being coached properly at school are miniscule. And you only have to look at the talent little ol’ Sri Lanka are turning out of their schools (yes, Sri Lanka!) to appreciate the value of such a breeding ground.

So, Gordon, if you really, really want to do something for sport, the answer should be as clear and plain and, well, dull as your demagoguery: buy back those playing fields and crank up the wages of the teachers who will have to work overtime to raise our future Kevin Pietersens and Darren Pattinsons. OK, Jimmy Andersons and Monty Panesars. And while you’re about it, sending a sicknote to IOC, confessing to your undying regret that staging the Olympics could bankrupt the nation, wouldn’t hurt either.

Yours sincerely

A Hopeful Romantic (Socialist branch)