Absence of big screens and anti-social behaviour orders preventing people cheering the England team exemplify the Scrooge-like mentality that’s gripped London, says Mimi Yates
I might not be the world’s biggest football fan – but I clearly care more about it than Amy Lame. Like many, I watched Sunday night’s European Championship Final to support our team and get into the patriotic spirit. But regardless of what happened on the pitch, the way that we were prevented from celebrating or commiserating in London was the real national disgrace.
The anti-fun police – in this case, the actual Metropolitan Police – seemed determined to prevent fans from enjoying themselves, as exemplified by one particular tweet. Did you want to watch it on a screen in central London? Not possible. Thinking of trying your luck anyway and forming part of a “crowd gathering and drinking?” We’ve put an anti-social dispersal order in place. You still want to travel in? Why don’t you “consider other options”? In other words, why don’t you just stay at home?
The refusal to put up any screens seems particularly egregious. Elliot Keck of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, lives by an outdoor seated area in Zone 1, which already has a screen but the game wasn’t shown out of “respect to residents.”
Meanwhile, our European counterparts got to be part of the huge crowds outside the Brandenburg Gate in Germany, or at Barcelona’s Placa de Catalunya. When I was (un)fortunate enough to be in Florence on the night of the 2021 final, I was spoilt for choice of central outdoor secreens.
If you were lucky enough to find somewhere decent to watch it, then the message was clear: good luck getting home. TfL sent an email lecturing its customers to ‘plan their entire journey home,’ which sounded like a text from my mother, rather than by the Capital’s travel operator which exists to enable us to go out and spend money. It also reminded us that if the game went to extra time and penalties, the Tube would have stopped running, meaning that the 15,000 who had travelled to the O2 to watch the one big showing we had bothered to put on had to cram onto a limited number of night buses. It might have been coming home, but you’d certainly have struggled to.
It’s hard to imagine this farce playing out in another European city. If there’s any major event going on in Prague, for example, the city makes the effort to run the metro past midnight so that revellers can get home. And in Manchester, the trams already run past Midnight on a Sunday.
Sadly, this dismissive attitude displayed by the authorities towards anyone who wanted to go out and support their team and, heaven forfend, have a good time in the process, is indicative of their wider approach to London’s nightlife. Much ink has already been spilled about Amy Lame, the city’s much-maligned night czar, and rightly so. Amid a spate of high-profile closures, Lame has done little to support the industry.
If we’re serious about supporting London’s world-leading hospitality industry, it’s time to take radical action. Ministers should encourage local authorities to allow al fresco dining – one of the few highlights of the pandemic – and enforce the existing ‘agent of change’ principle in our planning laws, rather than pandering to a loud minority of puritanical Nimbys. As the Adam Smith Institute argued in our recent On The Rocks report, we should also consider cutting VAT and alcohol duty on hospitality businesses.
Most of all, institutions and decision-makers should view revelry and merriment as an opportunity rather than a nuisance. We should be glad that Brits are so keen to celebrate, and if they’re boosting the economy in the process then – unlike a football tournament – it’s a win win.
Mimi Yates is director of engagement at the Adam Smith Institute