Brexit, Trump and Aldershot FC
TALKING POLITICS
Catherine Carr
4.7 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2020
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week David and Helen talk with the historian David Kynaston about his diary of the 2016-17 season in football and in politics, when a lot happened both to the world and to his beloved Aldershot FC. It's a conversation about loyalty, identity and belonging, and about what sorts of change we can tolerate and what we can't. Plus Helen reflects on her life as a West Ham fan.
Talking Points:
For David Kynaston, football is about identity.
- We all have our personal myths.
- Continuity of space, even colours, is also important.
Football in Britain has derived a lot of meaning from the relationship between club and place.
- The continuity between location and fan base broke at some point in the 1990s, maybe earlier.
- And then there are questions of ownership, management.
For David Kynaston, football is rooted in place; politics is not.
- Small and medium sized towns feel ‘left behind’; these places have also been left behind in the football sense.
- But anger about the inequalities or the premier league doesn’t have a lot of political purchase.
What is the relationship between the planning period of the 50s and 60s and Brexit voters?
- People who lived through that maybe had reasons to distrust people telling them what was best.
- There was also a coarsening of popular culture, led by Murdoch and the Sun.
Mentioned in this Episode:
- David Kynaston’s new book, Shots in the Dark
- Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time
- Colin Shindler’s books on Manchester United and Manchester City
- Our post-Trump episode
- David Goodhart on somewheres and anywheres
- Liverpool’s vote and Sun readership
- The Financial Times editorial on Trump and Portland
Further Learning:
And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello my name is David Runtzman and this is Talking Politics. This week Helen and I are |
| 0:12.1 | talking to the historian David Kimiston about politics and football. Trump, Brexit and all |
| 0:19.2 | the short FC. |
| 0:23.4 | Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, Europe's |
| 0:28.4 | Leading magazine of books and ideas where you can read elegant and expensive essays |
| 0:34.4 | on every subject imaginable. From Amir Strinovassan on pronouns to James |
| 0:39.8 | Meek on the WHO, from Pancage Mischra on Anglo-America to Catherine Rundell on the Greenland |
| 0:47.3 | Shark. Get 12 issues in print and online that's half a year of the LRB for just 12 pounds |
| 0:56.9 | with the URL lrb.me slash talk. That's lrb.me slash talk. |
| 1:13.8 | David Kimiston kept a diary of the 2016-17 season in football and in politics. You have |
| 1:20.4 | to read the book to find out what happened to all the short. I think we all know what |
| 1:24.2 | happened in politics. That was the aftermath of Brexit and that was the year that Trump |
| 1:30.0 | became president of the United States and his diary which we're going to talk about now |
| 1:34.4 | into weaves the story of supporting a local football team and watching the world to his |
| 1:39.4 | mind fall apart. The technology let us down a little bit this week so the sound quality |
| 1:44.6 | may not be quite as good as we would like it to be but we really hope you enjoy this conversation. |
| 1:50.8 | So David we both really enjoyed the book just to give you a heads up Helen is a West |
| 1:54.7 | Ham fan though we think there is something to talk about in relation to what happened |
| 2:00.8 | to West Ham in moving ground in the year that you wrote about your deep sugar. What would |
| 2:05.4 | happen so we want to get to that and then do the politics and everything else as well. |
| 2:09.3 | There's a kind of way from all the short via West Ham to Brexit. It doesn't take a huge |
| 2:15.5 | leap together. David this is a book about football and it's a book about politics and they're |
... |
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