What a difference six years makes …

We were on a family holiday in Spain for the London 2012 opening ceremony on 27th July. I’d never been a fan of such ‘spectaculars’ in the past, but we watched this one, gathered round a small TV in the sticky heat of a Spanish summer evening, and right there, right then, I was bitten by the London 2012 bug which ignited the most beautiful two weeks I can remember.

Not only was the sport breathtaking, the organisation fantastic, the drama unending, but much more than that was the feel-good factor that permeated the entire fabric of Great Britain.

There were the volunteers of course, the games makers, who were heroic. Visitors (guests) were welcomed at airports and guided across London, nay, across the whole country, to their sporting event of choice. Cultures mixed, laughed and cried together.

It might have only been two weeks but it felt like an entire summer. TeamGB exceeded all expectations, but the real heroes were the men and women who made it all possible, the Great British public and the millions of overseas visitors. During those two weeks Britain was a truly magical place to be. People smiled, helped, supported, cared, cried and celebrated together. We were a truly united nation and pride dripped from our shores.

Six years on from that opening ceremony and look at Britain now – a broken, dispirited nation divided and fractured by Brexit. Politicians on all sides placing personal interests before their country, and all sense of community, one-nation pulling together, has evaporated in the dry, oppressive heat of the summer of 2018.

Chris Hoy, Mo Farah, Bradley Wiggins and Jessica Ennis-Hill have been replaced in the headlines by Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Theresa May and a disappointingly recalcitrant Jeremy Corbyn.

Community seems to have been replaced by disunity, pride by shame. Hatred is the new currency.

Bar-room talk these days isn’t of success and gold-medals, but about stockpiling medicines and food, of mile long queues at Dover, and instead of reaching out to visitors, welcoming them, helping them, our 2018 games makers are closing our doors not opening them. Visitors are no longer welcome and they’re beginning to understand – ‘they’ being the rest of the world, bar Donald Trump.

I want the spirit of 2012 back. Perhaps football didn’t manage to come home this summer, but maybe the pride in our nation can. Not the ugly pride of fascism, but rather pride borne from openness and collaboration.

The European Union is a coming together of countries which share common interests – a continent first and foremost, but also a union that strives to work together, to solve problems collaboratively, not to create more of them.

Six years on and I want my country back. I want to feel like this again.