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  1. Politics
23 July 2014updated 23 Jul 2021 9:16am

The Commonwealth Games begin: will they be a political spectacle?

The Commonwealth Games will open in Glasgow today, and Alex Salmond has promised not to use them for political purposes. Will he keep his word?

By Anoosh Chakelian

The torches are lit, lurid lycra is being donned, Rod Stewart and Lulu are doing some vocally-beneficial gargling and some poor soul is dressing up as a larger-than-life cartoon thistle called Clyde. The 20th Commonwealth Games begin later in Glasgow’s Celtic Park.

But big sports events are never uncomplicated, and we can be sure to see some politics playing out in this year’s spectacle, not least because of its location. Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond will no doubt be considering how useful the Games could be for his Scottish independence cause, what with the referendum coming up in September.

He’s already bemused Andy Murray and family, as well as all Wimbledon viewers, by waving the saltire in the Royal Box at Centre Court when Murray won Wimbledon last year. He also controversially urged Scots to get behind the “Scolympians” in the Olympic Games in 2012, a name he came up with to describe Scottish competitors rather than “Team GB”.

The BBC’s Today programme this morning asked whether the Games would be a “politics-free” zone, and explored this question with Jim Naughtie visiting the 1990 City of Culture (now it’s known officially just as a “City of Culture”) and asserting that the Games are bound to be about “national feelings” and “questions of identity”. He said the Games would be a significant “backdrop” to the debate the Scots have been having about their role in the UK and the world.

Yesterday, the Independent’s Chris Green asked whether the Scottish referendum would be the “elephant in the stadium”, writing how both sides of the debate will probably be planning how to play their part in the Games with political shrewdness:

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For the next fortnight, leaders on either side of the Scottish independence debate will desperately try to avoid being seen to make political capital out of the sporting spectacle unfolding in Glasgow – while privately hoping that their attendance at the Commonwealth Games will do just that.

While Nick Clegg has commented that, “the less politics, particularly politics relating to the referendum campaign, the better. Let’s celebrate the sport, not the politics, at the Commonwealth Games”. And the government’s Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael has warned Salmond not to pull another stunt like he did at Wimbledon, saying it would be “exceptionally foolish” and an “enormous mistake and a misjudgement of the mood, especially in Glasgow…

“People in Scotland will react badly to anybody who tries to make political capital from the endeavour of sportsmen and women.”

Salmond himself has promised not to use the Commonwealth Games for political capital, announcing his “self-denying ordnance” over referendum campaigning for the ten-day duration of the event:

I’ve taken a kind of self-denying ordinance to concentrate on the Games over the next 10 days and I think that’s what the people of Scotland want.

However, as the Telegraph pointed out yesterday, Salmond has already gone back on his promise criticising the Chancellor George Osborne for being based in London and arguing that Scottish athletes would “flourish” in an independent Scotland, during a Games press conference.

So, aside from the 6,500 athletes and 17 different sports, a spectacle worth watching will be both sides of the referendum debate trying to gain traction for their causes in the final lap of campaigning.

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