For us Manchester City fans, it was a little glimmer of light in what have been irredeemably dark days. Andy Burnham, with the applause of the Labour Conference still ringing in his ears, said he would be “really concerned” if Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, the owners of Manchester City who have been found guilty of wholesale breaches of football’s financial rules, sold the club.
It felt like a welcome change of tone. While the world has been united, so to speak, in condemnation of the alleged cooking of Manchester City’s books, the Prime Minister, not averse to taking political risks, chose to posit a proposition which was counter to the general opprobrium: that, irrespective of what happened or didn’t happen within the football club, Abu Dhabi has been good for Manchester.
There is the possibility that, at the end of this legal process, either the Emirati regime will be forced to divest itself of the club, or they might think that owning Manchester City has become more trouble than it’s worth, and Burnham is clear this would not be a good result. “I would be really concerned to lose them,” he said. “They’ve been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester, and the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is.”
He went on to thank the owners “for the money that they didn’t just put into the Etihad [Stadium] and the campus around it but also into the city.” And it is undeniable that Manchesterism – Burnham’s shorthand term for the political philosophy which encourages enlightened civic leaders to attract outside investment to revive a city’s economic fortunes – has been underpinned by the hundreds of millions of pounds Abu Dhabi has ploughed into the area around the Etihad, previously one of the most deprived and desolate quarters of the city. They have helped create hundreds of jobs and improve social, educational and housing outcomes for the community.
This part of Manchester is almost entirely about the football. New housing, new hotels, more commercial developments, the local skyline dotted with cranes – would any of it have happened had Manchester City not been turned into a globally successful club, attracting football tourists from all around the world? What will happen now to all these glistening symbols of Manchester’s revival if Manchester City’s punishment is to leave them in football’s netherworld for a number of years?
So Burnham is probably right to turn attention, if only briefly, away from the alleged mismanagement of the football club and on to a wider, and potentially more important, issue for the city and its inhabitants. But in so doing, he is inviting examination of his own record. As mayor, he said Manchester was always open for business and would welcome investment from all manner of sources. So much of Manchester’s economic revival has been fuelled by foreign investment, from China and the Middle East in particular, and Burnham, having lauded Abu Dhabi’s involvement, may now find himself having to answer questions about the basis on which money has flowed into the city. That’s not to say anything suspect has taken place, but it may be a distraction he doesn’t need.
Not only that, but as Prime Minister, he should make it clear that money and influence do not buy exemption from scrutiny. This is not a question of whether Manchester City’s owners have been good for the city of Manchester. Clearly they have, on so many levels, even if it is not without their own self-interest at heart. But they are now deemed to have cheated their way to footballing success, and there is clear political peril for Burnham in pointing out the wider, positive aspects of their involvement at the very time an independent panel has found that they are guilty of serious breaches of the sport’s financial rules.
We know that Burnham loves his football, and we know that attachment to a club can cloud one’s judgement. Before Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Lamborghini pulled up in Manchester, the title deeds to Manchester City Football Club belonged to Thaksin Shinawatra, who was then the recently deposed Prime Minister of Thailand.
Even though his regime had allegedly been responsible for more than 2,000 extra-judicial killings, Shinawatra was able to buy Manchester City in 2007 because – ludicrously, in retrospect – he passed the Premier League’s “Fit and Proper Person Test”.
His was a brief, but momentarily glorious, tenure. Human rights organisations continued to question Shinawatra’s record as Thailand’s Prime Minister, but we hardly gave it a second thought. For a brief period, we were top of the Premier League. We knew he was a bad lot, but after years of under-achievement, we were thrilled to bask in his financial munificence.
The law caught up with Shinawatra in 2008, and he was forced to sell the club to the current owners. And now we are faced with history repeating itself. But one thing has changed for the fans – we now realise that you cannot compartmentalise the ownership of a football club. If you break the rules of the game – any game, in fact – you can’t point to your achievements elsewhere. It’s a moral non sequitur. And the wrongdoing can’t be offset by a community purpose here, or a sporting facility there.
Burnham no doubt felt he was being true to his sense of fair play in illuminating the beneficial aspects of Abu Dhabi’s stewardship of Manchester City. But if, as owners of the club, they are found guilty of malfeasance on an unprecedented scale, it will not spare them, or indeed mitigate their punishment. I think it’s best if our Prime Minister keeps well clear.