Was Wimbledon FC the only thing Blair wanted to relocate to Ireland?
Government papers released by the National Archives have revealed that in the late 1990s Tony Blair discussed a plan to move Wimbledon FC, than a Premiership team to Belfast and rename it.
The clubs rogue owner Sam Hammam was frustrated at being unable to redevelop the Plough Lane site in South-West London and eventually the club moved to Milton Keynes in 2004 and became the now obscure MK Dons.
Meanwhile fans formed AFC Wimbledon which despite official disapproval has reclaimed a place in the football league and plays at a new stadium situated close to the original.
Blair’s idea mirrors other grand plans for changing things- Iraq being a key example. He told the Financial Times before Christmas that he had recently met Benjamin Netanyahu a long time acquaintance.
It begs the question of whether it was just the football club Blair wanted to relocate. Were the fans also to be moved and see it might have been difficult to identify all of them, perhaps the whole of south-west London too.
Perhaps later official papers will reveal what Blair did plan for the future of south-west London. In the meantime the fans who formed AFC Wimbledon deserve a far more positive mention in the history of the New Labour years than Blair does himself.
Blair is looking like ‘Bob’ from Twin Peaks these days.