I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) for securing this debate. I think that he and I would be agreeable to the kind of proposal that the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) made: to use him as part of a cross-party assault on what has gone on in Coventry, which is an indication of the wider and very dangerous disease that exists within our national game.
It is good news, of course, that the Sky Blues are playing in Coventry again. It would be amusing if it was not so offensive to see the Football League clamouring to take some credit for that decision. It has shamelessly sought to do so, but it deserves no credit whatsoever for the fact that Coventry City are coming back to play in the city of Coventry. The people who deserve the credit are many, but the Football League is not among them, I am afraid. The fans have to be congratulated, having organised a pretty effective boycott of the alternative home venue. They have attended away matches, but starved the club of attendance and support at Northampton, and they have done so in a fairly effective way. They must be congratulated for organising that boycott. Many different organisations, the Sky Blue Trust among them, have come together to help the boycott, but the fans in general deserve our congratulations on the campaign they have kept up most effectively.
The people of Coventry in general deserve congratulations and credit for the fact that the football club is coming back to the city, because they have never, with very few exceptions, been conned by the spin and the lies put out by the football club’s owners, Sisu Capital, about what it has been doing and why it has been doing it. The people of Coventry have seen through this pretty clearly, and it has been impossible, despite strenuous efforts and all kinds of expertise being employed, for the football club’s owners to get a grip on public opinion locally. It has singularly failed in that regard. In itself, that is indicative of the kind of people they are and the problems they bring on themselves.
Generally speaking, football clubs are fairly well-supported organisations, whereas local authorities and councils are not usually that well thought of, but I have to say that the council has not come under any real pressure as a result of this dispute, because the people of Coventry have seen through the nonsense and the spin they have been subjected to.