No rational person predicted that Team GB would beat the entire world apart from the US and come second in Rio. Especially not of my generation, fed on almost a lifetime of Olympic under achievement until the breakthrough in Beijing. There is of course much talk about sporting legacies, with inspiration seeping into every park and playground motivating champions of the future. Yet there is a bigger lesson here than people realize. This winning medal hall is the result not of chance or luck, but of design. The old notion that the gifted amateur would burst forth to triumph was cast aside when John Major inaugurated lottery funded Olympic development. Rather than throw the money indiscriminately at potential stars, an infrastructure was established covering every single facet of the requirements to achieve world class competitive excellence with a clear focused objective; to win. And to go on winning.
This lesson is transferable and to no better place than the economy. Brexit demands that after bumbling about for decades, drifting first from Empire, then falling as an industrial super-power to an economy which is now 80% shopping, funded by borrowing secured by house price inflation, in which every kind of inequality grows, we at last reconfigure our economic model in a fundamental way no less dramatic than Germany and Japan at the end of WWII. To do that the Olympic triumph tells us the government will have to come up with two key elements to set the economic reboot going. A comprehensive strategic plan with exemplary tactical execution, and a pile of cash to ignite it, at least £1 trillion.
So far there is no sign of any of this. We wait upon May and her do nothing government with interest.