The British people don’t just want to take part, they want to win

In truly unprecedented fashion, London’s Olympic Stadium has been packed to bursting point at every stage of the athletics this week.  Despite poor showings from corporate sponsor ticketholders, we’ve seen the public crowd in to see the rowing, cycling, swimming, archery, shooting, tennis, gymnastics, handball and every other discipline being held.

27 million of us watched the extraordinary Olympic opening ceremony in awe (that figure not including the countless people watching in pubs and, in my case, at private parties).  17 million saw Mo Farrah storm to 10,000m glory, 16.3million cheered Jess Ennis over the finishing line, 15.6 million saw Greg Rutherford jump into the history books, 9.2 million saw our ladies cycle to victory.  29 million of us have watched events on the BBC Website, presumably taking a cheeky break from work to do so.

Across the country, Union flags hang from bedroom windows, on London’s tube network perfect strangers exchange stories of what they’ve been to see and helpful citizens guide lost tourists to their destinations.  The country has a big, proud smile on its face – and we should savour every second.

Politicians pontificate endlessly over who is most ‘in touch’, but no political party can adequately represent and serve the British people unless they make the effort to understand them – so what lessons can we learn from these fabulous Olympics? And how should they guide our future policies and behaviour?

1)      The moaners get too much airtime

The tube will let us down. The traffic will be chaos. We won’t be able to get to work. The opening ceremony won’t be as good as Beijing’s.  Blah, blah, blah.  In the run up to the games, the media gave the impression that the Olympics was going to just be a big pain in the arse.  Even  professional miserablist Morrisey, King of Negative Town himself, got in on the act.

But if we’ve seen anything these past weeks, we’ve seen the relentless optimism of the British people.  People have taken the opportunity to thank the military for their service, they’ve united in saying ‘the tube is working great’, they’ve been wowed by the ingenuity and craftsmanship of those who built the stadia and volunteered in their thousands to help make the games work.  They’ve welcomed the world with open arms and behaved like the perfect host, they’ve cheered and sang till their voices were hoarse and are loving every second.

It makes the shameless politicking of the Lib Dems, the relentless ‘not my fault guv’ of the Tories and, frankly, the childish PMQ’s goading of some Labour MPs look all the more out of touch.  When a country shows itself to be, despite its many difficulties, optimistic by its very nature, the mood and behaviour of those who govern it should reflect that too.  The country has also shown itself to be packed with thoroughly nice people, so those so desperate to participate in the nastiness that can sometimes be associated with British politics must ask themselves just who it is they are trying to represent.

2)      We’re proud of our history

The opening ceremony, almost unanimously praised, reminded us that rural tradition and urban multi-ethnicity don’t just co-exist, they compliment each other as equal parts of British heritage.  We were reminded too that Britain knows the meaning of a day’s graft.  That we were the engine room of the industrial revolution both in brain and brawn, and were the architects of the technological revolution too.  We also told the world that, in our society, whoever you are and whatever your ills – there’s a team of NHS Mary Poppins’ waiting to banish the monster under your bed.  This, as they say, is for everyone.

The lesson for our politicians?  We’re still an ambitious country.  We still want to make things, do things, strive for something bigger and better.  I felt the collective thought of the British people had been summed up as ‘Industrial revolution – check.  Technological revolution – check.  What can we do next?  What can we achieve tomorrow?’  The British people are hungry to keep going, and it is only our ambition that holds us back.  It’s the politicians’ job to harness the energy and build the next stage in our contribution to the global progress.  So what will it be? And how can it be delivered?

3)      We celebrate real achievement

As it turns out, the UK is not as obsessed with the vacuousness of celebrity culture as we thought.  It would be easy to think that Big Brother, X-Factor and The Only Way is Essex had sucked the nation’s brain through its nostrils to the point where kids were being actively encouraged to degrade themselves on national television.

But no.  Real achievement is now respected more than ever, and we are united in celebrating the achievers.  Many of those within Team GB have made extraordinary sacrifices to be where they are now.  We see the Olympic glory, but we don’t see the hours, years even, of lonely mornings in the gym and training facilities where natural talent is harnessed and nurtured into something extraordinary.  We have seen the determination, the belief and the dedication.  We’ve seen what people can achieve when they put their minds to it.

Our kids finally have role-models to be truly proud of.  Team GB have shown the world that if you work hard, strive to do your best, resist temptation, behave in a sportsmanlike way, show real discipline and dedicate yourself to the pursuit of being the best you can be then you, too, can achieve something great – even when it is against the odds.

I’ve got a word limit to keep within.  So I’ll bring these thoughts to a close – and I’ve doubtlessly missed many more lessons that could easily be drawn.  This has not been a political Olympics – and nor should it have been.  But the national mood and sentiment has told us something about modern Britain.  And we must learn from it.  For me, the greatest way to be in touch with ‘ordinary people’ (a phrase I hate for its subjective definition) is to be amongst them.  So if you want to learn any lessons to be applied in a political context, enjoy every second of what’s left of the games.  You may learn something about the British people, and you may enjoy yourselves whilst doing it.

Go Team GB!