Sporting MPs

For some unknown reason, apart from my own strange sense of curiosity, I decided to take a look at who represents' the UK's top flight professional teams in Football, Rugby Union and Rugby League.

The thirteen UK clubs in Super League have ten Labour MPs, with the Liberal Democrats at Harlequins and Leeds and the Conservative at Warrington as the exceptions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Aviva Premiership twelve clubs has half of the clubs in Conservative seats (Exeter, Gloucester, London Irish, Northampton, Saracens and Wasps), with the Lib Dems at Harlequins, Leeds and also Bath and then three Labour MPs at Newcastle, Sale and Leicester.

The Premier League is all Labour, with the exception of Fulham and Chelsea, and to my surprise Wolverhampton who all have Tory MPs. Presumably there would be more Tory MPs further down the leagues, but I think that these will still be in the vast minority.

In terms of constituencies fielding BNP candidates, 11 out of the 13 Super League constituencies had a BNP candidate and one of those that didn't, East Hull, had a National Front candidate. Half of all the Premier League constituencies had a BNP candidate and five out of the 12 Aviva Premiership candidates. All this shows is that Rugby League areas are more likely to have the under-represented white working class voters that the BNP appear to target. Stoke City's constituency had the percentage highest BNP vote, with Bradford Bulls in second place.

What does this show? Not a lot really, perhaps I could say that it underlines the importance of Middle England which is not an actual geographical location and also that for the 80 or so constituencies that make up the Football League (only 17 in the Premier League), that there are about 450 who aren't counted in this. For every Stretford and Urmston (home of Manchester United), there is a Pudsey, Folkestone and Hythe, Brentwood and Ongar, Broxbourne and Cannock Chase. Football and Rugby League have their routes in traditional working class areas and this is reflected in the political make-up of these areas.