We’re half-way into the major political parties jousting for top position in the polls and let’s face it, it’s closer than anyone thought it would be. As I write this the polls suggest that the Conservatives are leading the way but by an ever narrowing margin. Like the last election this is going to be a tight one which will come down to personality and a few key issues.

All the manifestos have been released and whilst education, health, the economy, the environment, home and foreign affairs will top the bill as always I believe the policies on the future of sport in this country should and will play a role. 

So for fun I thought I’d set myself the challenge of answering this simple question:  if all else was equal which of the party’s sports policy would I vote for?

I wanted to ensure fairness here so I decided to look back on some of the key decisions made over the last few year’s. The most significant was the decision by John Major to set up the National Lottery. Without the grants into all levels of sport who knows where we’d be now? Another major sporting milestone came in 2006 when the IOC announced London as the host city for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympic Games. This came on Toby Blair’s watch but with a cross-party bid team led by Lord Coe.

Since this announcement the Labour Government cut funding into sport from £397 million down to £209 million in 2006. In March 2006, Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, announced £600 million would be spent on elite sport for the London Olympic cycle. UK Sport’s grant allocation was quite rightly based on this figure however no organisation picked up the baton on looking for the £100 million portion which was to come from the private sector. 

The fallout from this error has meant that some sports have had severe cuts from what they were promised and ultimately some athletes had no choice but to give up their Olympic dream.  If that wasn’t bad enough I know that at least one major sponsor walked away from providing a significant cash investment into elite sport as a result of this blunder. 

Add to this reports of rising child obesity, 7-10 per cent of children not getting the minimum two  hours of PE per week at their school and high dropout rates from sport once children leave school and you could say that the Labour Government haven’t "competed" well in this area.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. In recognising the failure to deliver £100 million of private sector funding, the Department for Media, Culture and Sport invested a further £50 million to halve the funding gap; a brave move in the current economic climate. 

There has also been the adoption of a new strategy for elite sport which has undoubtedly contributed to the success that TeamGB had in Beijing and since. The restructuring of Sport England has also proved to be a success. So a mixed bag all in all.

So what’s the difference in the major party’s policies moving forward? My intention was to compare the three major parties. 

Unfortunately there simply isn’t enough detail in the LibDem’s sports policy compared to the two other major parties so they wont be getting my vote - in this hypothetical election.

Both Labour and the Conservatives recognise the value of sport at grassroots level and are targeting increased participation. They also both promise to deliver a successful Games in 2012, on time and on budget. Surprise surprise!  Finally they both seems to agree on the fact that healthy competition needs to be re-instilled in school sport…whoever decided that wasn’t the case was having a bad day!  The lessons learned from competitive school sport (and I mean winning and losing) are impossible to replace later in life.



The differences?  Labour, under Prime Minister Gordon Brown (pictured) seem to me to be focussing on what has already been achieved. "Our ambition is clear to be the first nation to create a world class sports system on the back of a home Olympics…….We have already delivered an increase of around 600,000, more adults participating in sport, and have set ourselves a clear and ambitious target of a million more people doing sport regularly by 2012."

There is the mention of their aim to reform club and community sport to help reduce the sport dropout level for school leavers which is a good policy.

The Conservatives seem to be taking a much more radical approach. Whilst they commit to leaving things as they are until after 2012 (sensibly) they have taken a leaf out of Labour’s book having recognised the value of the reform to Sport England.  The ambitious task they are setting themselves is to bring Sport England, UK Sport and the Youth Sports Trust "under one roof". Their other major goal is to create a Cabinet Office cross departmental sports body. 

I’ve not gone into great depth here but I believe I’ve covered the major issues on which the leading parties are basing their sport’s campaigns. On the one hand Labour are presenting a safe bet which aims to continue the good work they’ve done in re-structuring the administration of sport in the UK.  This is much needed work and no one can argue with that.  On the other hand the Conservatives are taking the much riskier path which will result in a major overhaul, has the potential to upset a lot of National Governing Bodies (NGBs) and will undoubtedly result in job losses in public sector sports administration. However given the affect that sport has on multiple Government departments there is a growing argument for this approach.

So where does that leave me?  Honestly, this is a tough one. 

As a sportsman the safer Labour approach is attractive. NGBs wont be asked to make another set of radical changes to their approach to their sport’s infrastructure and the “slow and steady” approach wont attract huge resistance. The businessman in me asks the simple question; if I was in charge of the administration of sport in this country what would I do? 

The current set-up has grown organically and every organisation delivers against its target in the way it has been asked. Through no fault of their own though, these organisations aren’t "joined up" enough. This means their messages get diluted; the good work they do is overlapped by the good work of other sporting bodies and has generally led to a very confused stakeholder market. When I talk to potential sponsors some walk away from sport purely because they cannot understand how all of these organisations fit together. 

The answer: get through the Olympics, hopefully with even more success than we had in Beijing and then overhaul the entire setup of sport from Central Government to rural grassroots community sport.  If it just came down to sporting policies, the Conservative party would get my vote.  If only it were that simple.

Karim Bashir is a former British international fencer who won a silver medal at the 1998 Commonwealth Games. He is the founder and managing director of Catch Sport, an online sponsorship brokering service which is free to use for athletes from all sports.