London slumps amid stadium blues and Brexit woes

Britain's Olympic legacy is mired in controversy and recrimination and the country itself has been torn asunder by Brexit, writes Michael Simkins

"For a few days back in 2012, London showed itself to be a city thoroughly at ease with its identity in the 21st century." Loop Images / UIG via Getty Images

The other day I stumbled across a DVD on sale in my local charity shop that invoked a tweak of profound, if unexpected melancholy. It was a commemorative BBC compilation of highlights from the 2012 London Olympics, still in it’s original packaging.

For a few days back in 2012, London showed itself to be a city thoroughly at ease with its identity in the 21st century. Yet a mere four years on, these events seems like some sepia-tinted relic from the distant past.

The Olympic legacy is mired in controversy and recrimination and Britain itself has been torn asunder by Brexit.

At the centre of the Olympic furore lies the huge 60,000-seater stadium in East London. Built to house both the opening ceremony and the track and field events, it has lain largely idle and unused since then.

What to do with such a monstrous edifice now its original purpose is complete? Convert it into housing? Transform it into a theme park? Well, the answer seemed to have been found when the London Legacy Development Corporation rented the stadium to West Ham United football club on a 99-year lease.

It seemed the perfect solution. Simply modify some of the seating, allowing West Ham to host regular Premier League football, and suddenly the arena’s future was ensured. Best of all, the move was trumpeted as relieving the taxpayer from having to fund what was regarded as an expensive white elephant. Now, however, it’s been revealed that the total cost of conversion has soared to £323 million (Dh1.48bn), taking the overall cost of building and converting the stadium to more than £700m.

Since the move, West Ham’s players also seem unsteady on their feet. It used to be said that playing a match at the West Ham’s former home, the cramped and much-loved Boleyn Ground, was worth an extra goal to the home side, so intimidating was the atmosphere for visiting teams.

But in the wide, anodyne expanses of the new “London Stadium”, the team has singularly failed to replicate their former menace, and now, two months into the new season, they lie perilously close to the relegation zone. Worse still, the club’s tenure has been marred by numerous ugly incidents of crowd violence, with warring fans fighting and hurling seats at one another.

Well, enough, it seems, is enough, or so says London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan. Stung by the spiralling costs of the venture, Mr Khan has announced an inquiry to find out what went wrong, whether it can be put right and how both the reputation and commercial viability of the stadium can be saved before it bankrupts Britain itself.

At the heart of the issue lies the specially designed blocks of retractable seating. Originally intended to improve the view for football crowds while still retaining the arena’s capacity to host rock concerts and athletics meetings, the cost of installing them was estimated to be £300,000 a year. Yet the total bill has ballooned to nearly £8 million. Even worse, engineers now estimate that whenever these seats have to be removed or replaced, the procedure could take up to 15 days rather than the five originally projected.

Inevitably, the controversy has its claimed its first casualty. Last Thursday, David Edmonds, chairman of the Development Corporation, offered his resignation to Mr Khan. If falling on your sword ever became an Olympic discipline, Mr Edmonds would surely be a gold medal prospect.

Who knows? Perhaps Mr Khan’s inquiry will turn things around. Perhaps the stadium will eventually become profitable. And perhaps Brexit will prove to be a good thing after all.

But I’m not holding my breath. Instead, I’ll be watching my 2012 Olympics DVD, and wallowing in nostalgia for a time when both the stadium, and the nation that built it, had a clearer idea of both its identity and its direction.

Michael Simkins is an actor and writer in London

On Twitter: @michael_simkins