In the digital age, there's big money to be made in large gatherings. But the Olympics will show the flaws of circus economics
Covering the G4S shortfall ... ‘What the Victorians reinvented as a herbivore festival of amateur athletics has become a parody of Hitler's chauvinist hysteria.' Photo: Getty
The stakes are too low. The Olympic Games were originally held so that young men could prepare for war. Now young men are recalled from war to prepare for the Olympic Games. It is the politics of the nation state gone mad. The commercialism, the heavy-handed security, the ostentatious plutocracy and phoney patriotism of the modern Olympics are out of all proportion to the cause. What the Victorians reinvented as a herbivore festival of amateur athletics has become a parody of Hitler's chauvinist hysteria. It starts with flags and anthems, moves on to medal tables and "heroes", and ends as the most important thing on Earth.
This week at least they sent in the clowns. Who can blame G4S? They have done what everyone has done with a nose in this trough. Offered a crazy amount of money to guard a dozen venues for a month "in partnership" with the Games' organising committee Locog, they took the money and ran. There was no threat remotely commensurate with a £1bn security budget, and security anyway devolves on to government. The word partnership is in this case a euphemism for someone else taking the blame.
This week, with teams arriving for what has become a festival of chauvinist public expenditure, Locog's strategy – of not being interviewed or held accountable for anything to anyone – paid off. The home secretary, the defence secretary and the culture secretary all took the stand to defend the delivery company's contractual negligence, on everything from lax security and soldiers' billets to bus navigation. Ministers even referred to Locog as "we".
Early in the London bid process I attended a conference at which the Blairite talk was of holding a "new games", even a "people's Olympics". They would put an end to the International Olympic Committee's self-importance, elitism and expense, showing how any world city could afford to host the Olympics by using existing facilities. There should be no question of the Olympics imposing a "white elephant cost", as on Montreal, Athens and Beijing. Sport would be made to fit the city, not the other way round.
The political ambition of Tony Blair and his team to "win" the games from France blew that to the winds. The IOC's demands for special stadiums, venues near five-star hotels and Guantánamo-style "fortified villages" were conceded. Huge sums were spent on consultants and buildings. The budget soared. London was sacrificed to extravagance and political kudos, and told it was lucky.
The Games were thus vulnerable to Britain's prevailing securocrat paranoia, as well as to the logistical chaos that comes with disrupting a large and busy city for a whole summer. There are guards who speak no English and drivers who have never heard of Tower Bridge. Only now are Londoners waking up to the statutory scope that parliament conceded to the IOC back in 2006. It could command London's police, traffic, advertising and business activity. It could enjoy unlimited access to the British exchequer. A £3bn budget swiftly ballooned to £9bn.
London is now being given a taste of what an unaccountable world government might be like, an Orwellian world of Zil lanes and G4S, private regulators and Locog inspectors roaming the streets, tearing down political banners and Pepsi ads. Not since William of Orange arrived with his Dutch army in 1688 has London's government been surrendered so completely to an alien power.
The cabinet and mayor have seemed so petrified that any disruption to the Games might cast aspersions on London's "brand" (or perhaps on them) that a month of enforced economic recession is worth the pain. The cost in displaced tourism and lost business of hosting the Games must be enormous, and wholly beyond the direct cost of the facilities.
How this can be matched by £13bn of extra business attributed to the Olympic Games by David Cameron last week is a mystery. It is as plausible as Stalin's report of Comrade Stakhanov's daily coal output. What we are seeing here is the new economics of big events. As the digital age gives way to "the age of live", demand for ever more grandiose experiences is becoming inexhaustible, whether sponsored by private enterprise or government. From music festivals and jubilee pageants to the humblest literary weekend, the craving for congregation grows ever greater. Far from supplanting live events, the electronic and social media appear to fuel them. Digital is no longer a destination but a portal, a magnet to personal or collective human intercourse. The internet may be free, but the money is at the gate. Smart money invests in the gate.
The trouble is where these congregations move from the desert and the countryside to complex modern cities. London is the nation's political and commercial capital. It is used to handling ceremonies, conferences, rallies and trade fairs. Its people can just about absorb the congestion and crowds. But the giant modern pilgrimages, the Olympics and world cups, are bursting the limits. London parks this summer have become industrial estates, crammed with business enclosures, containers, marquees and car parks. Concerts keep residents awake at night. The streets of the West End are even proposed as a Formula One circuit.
Cities have no real future as theme parks. Trying to allot a hundred miles of crowded streets and their traffic lights to VIPs is crazy. So too is the mayor telling his citizens to stay away from work for a month, for fear of upsetting someone else's business or leisure, however worthy. Ministers cannot go on about the "legacy return to Britain", when everyone who studies past Olympics and is not paid by government knows there is none. There is only cost.
The 21st century will be the age of cities. But their prosperity depends on offering a constant and stable environment for workers and residents. Any disturbance to the life of a city is a cost. Global extravaganzas should be dispersed or held at a permanent site, as certainly could be the Olympics. Cities cannot survive on circus economics. It did no good for Nero or for Rome.
Attention will soon mercifully turn to the young athletes themselves. Theirs will be the job of rescuing the London Games from the image created by Locog. But recent experience will not be lost on one visitor, José Arthur Peixoto, organiser of the 2016 Rio Olympics. He must be sitting with his head in his hands, a tear rolling quietly down his cheek.
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