Britain should launch bid with Liverpool and Manchester says campaigner

LONDON : Britain should put together a bid for a 'North-West Olympics' centred around Manchester and Liverpool because it would have a much bigger impact than the London 2012 Games, veteran major event campaigner Bob Scott has said.

Scott, who led Manchester’s unsuccessful bids for the 1996 and 2000 Olympics and helped bring the 2002 Commonwealth Games to the city, believes the London Games were a major success but thinks the UK “missed a trick” by not using the Olympics to level up and forge ahead with a northern bid.

In an interview with Reuters ahead of Wednesday’s 10th anniversary of the 2012 opening ceremony, Scott said: “If the phrase ‘northern powerhouse’ means anything, it actually means having things going on in that city which are of international significance. What is more internationally significant than the Olympics?

“If the British Olympic Association (BOA) had stuck with Manchester through thick and thin, then, as (a regional city like) Brisbane is going to stage the 2032 Olympics, Manchester would have got them as well.

“If that had happened, I think you would have changed Britain. I am not saying they made a mistake with London and it was wrong. But I am saying that if Manchester had the Olympics for the first time, it would be more life-changing for the nation than London having it for the third time."

"That is ‘Red Wall thinking’ and I think an opportunity has been missed. In the proper heroic memory of London, it might be just worth saying that in the fullness of time Britain missed a trick. Think of all the infrastructure that London got. It would have been the catalyst for levelling up.”

The Red Wall is a term used for political constituencies mainly in the Midlands, Northern England and North-East Wales.