Shilly-shalling protest

Countries living in glass houses should be very careful about making international protests, especially when their own location is within stone-throwing distance, as is the case for Britain and the impending Olympics. Margaret Thatcher found out that boycotting sports events achieves very little when she stopped Britain's official participation in the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet Union's military presence in Afghanistan. Sweet irony indeed, especially given that the UK runner Seb Coe who ignored the ban and won a gold medal in the 1500 metres is now Lord Coe and presiding over the 2012 Olympics.

Yesterday's announcement that British ministers and officials will not attend England's games in Ukraine during the group stages of Euro 2012 as a protest against the treatment of the former Ukrainian president Julia Tymoshenko, both in court and In prison, follows similar gestures by the European Commission and Germany. But instead of making a clean job of an inevitably controversial protest the announcement shilly-shallied by wishing the England team success while using as an excuse for official absence both “pressure on ministers before the Olympics” and “concern about selective justice and the rule of law in the Ukraine.” The latter obviously is what really matters even if there is room for some doubt about Tymoshenko's case. But there is very little evidence that sport-protests on non-sporting issues ever succeed.