This week’s column begins with a great big Happy Birthday in verse to my beloved Brighton & Hove Albion FC: we were 125 years old on June 24, and we celebrated at the Seven Stars pub where the club was formed. As our official poet I was commissioned to mark the occasion, and it was a pleasure to do so, especially sat the end of a season where we qualified for Europe for the second time. 

OUR FINEST HOUR

The year Victoria died our club was born:
Our early homes Divisions Three and Four.
‘That’s Bobby Smith’ my dad said. I was six.
I really don’t remember any more…
Kit Napier, Ken Beamish, Peter Ward:
The First Division, Wembley, Gordon Smith.
Most still forget the actual goal he scored:
The one he didn’t now the stuff of myth…

Then Penney, Nelson, Small and Johnny Byrne
Bright moments as things went from bad to cruel.
Down to the very bottom of the league
As we fans fought Bill Archer’s hateful rule.
The draw at Hereford the crucial day:
Knight at the helm, our future safe at last.
It’s right to honour those who paved the way
And celebrate the present WITH the past.

1901: born at the Seven Stars.
In ‘97: reborn, gloriously.
We’re Blooming now in 2026.
Our crucial dates, and I salute all three.
I knew, and wrote, that we’d come storming back
But oh, with such fine football and such power!
A century and a quarter in, no doubt
This truly is the Albion’s finest hour.

Our stewardship the envy of the world -
A quality that money cannot buy.
Succession planning no one else can match
Although less well-run clubs will always try..
We sail on modern football’s choppy seas
Serenely forward, changing as we grow.
A journey from the gutter to the stars.
So happy birthday, Albion. On we go!

And now I shall enter the debate about Andy Burnham. 

We live in an age of fake news, disinformation, “celebrities” and soundbites. How something is presented is at least as important as how it actually is — as long as it isn’t obviously false. 

Burnham isn’t obviously false. He’s clever, and has adapted to different times. To say “this is what he was like ten years ago, so he’s still like it now” is wooden thinking in itself, it doesn’t take into consideration the possibility that an individual can change — and more importantly, it ignores how much the moneymen have moved to the right to embrace fascism as the people behind Krupp, Siemens et al did in early 1930s Germany. 

This is the age of far-right billionaires brainwashing millions. Unity against fascism is, for me, literally, the only thing that matters right now. Having a populist leader who can achieve a result like Makerfield is the starting point — even if he turns out to be a cardboard cutout. 

Because if we, the grass roots, have the strength, self-belief and independence of thought to use that cardboard cutout as the point of entry on the metaphorical and actual doorstep, we can get somewhere regardless — as long as we are engaged and can show results.

And what if he isn’t? What if he really is prepared to take on the bond markets, the foreign hedge funds and “shareholder” leeches? Do we STILL stand around talking about what he did in 2015?

This is the best chance we’ve got to stop Farage. Your Party was a disaster, and those who made it so — many of them good people with good brains — still don’t understand that we are in a completely new age where unity against fascism is more important than EVERYTHING else, so they’ve gone to the Greens and are doing the same thing there. It’s tearing the Green Party apart now. 

We have to find a way to unite people, and Burnham is our best hope. I am absolutely certain of that.

And let me once again gently point out that I’m a poet and musician, not a political party, and this is what I think. I don’t have a manifesto, I follow no-one but myself and please don’t expect me to! 

Happy Summer.

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