One advantage of teaching sports to young people is so that they may learn that there are winners and losers.

Young people need to out-live being “poor losers” and sport is a good playingfield to teach and learn this.

It seems that many politicians have still to learn this. Too many behave like spoilt children who stamp their feet if they do not have their way, or to spoilt teenagers who develop grievances, so that grievance politics is becoming mainline.

The SNP have for long used grievance against Westminster as the reason for its failures in administrating Scottish affairs.

However, this grievance politics is international. Some recent well-known examples are 1. the inability of the Remoaners to accept the UK Brexit result in 2016, following which 2. the SNP began to challenge the result of the ‘once-in-a-generation’ 2014 Referendum for Scotland to leave the United Kingdom and 3. the US Democratic Party could not accept Donald Trump’s winning the US Presidential election in Nov 2016, and from the first day of the result they campaigned throughout his presidency against its legitimacy. There are many other examples.

The most recent example in British politics is the inability of the Conservative Party to accept the outcome of its own rules for choosing its leader. The campaign continues to oust Liz Truss as leader and Prime Minister.

Various forms

There are various forms of this grievance politics. One of the commonest is the complaint that things cannot improve for lack of money, as if more money will solve most problems. Again, the SNP use this regularly but it is not confined to them. It is a feature of those who think other people’s money is for them to spend, normally associated with socialism.

Update:

14 Oct 2022: how the UK elects its politicians, which some people cannot live with.

19 Oct 2022: I am not alone in suggesting this.

12 Jun 2023: sport used to be a means of teaching children not only teamwork but to be good losers. However, this is now questionable following the behaviour of players and supporters after some high-profile football marches, such as the abusive behaviour towards the referee of the Europa League final.

7 Aug 2024: in discussing the rioting and violence on the streets of Britain, Nigel Farage fears that parliamentary democracy is not working for young people [at 7:03 p.m.]. The peaceful transition of power through elections is failing, encouraged by politicians themselves.