As Six SPFL Clubs Wait To See What Reforms They Get, Where The Hell Are Celtic?

Two weeks before the Brexit vote, the staff inside the Remain campaign were panicked by a poll which showed that their support amongst Tory voters had held steady, but that there was a marked slide in their share of the vote amongst those who supported Labour.

They held an emergency meeting, asked Downing Street and the Tory machine to take some time off, and tried desperately to energise “the Labour base.” It failed, spectacularly.

One of the reasons it failed was that too many Labour figures put their own petty grievances ahead of doing the right thing. Right from the start, Corbyn had refused to attend any campaign event with a Tory, and he wasn’t the only senior Labour MP who did.

When one strategist suggested that all the surviving Labour leaders get together for a campaign event, Corbyn refused as a matter of course. What was more shocking was that Gordon Brown didn’t want to share a platform with Tony Blair either.

He, like Corbyn, had also steadfastly refused to do any events where David Cameron was also on the slate. Never mind that there was a larger national interest.

So many people were unable to think in those terms.

Yesterday the SPFL responded to the demands from the Ibrox club and a half dozen others to publish an action plan in line with the “recommendations” of their “independent report.”

This report was commissioned by the governing body itself and not surprisingly said that their procedures and processes are all just fine. Ibrox scorned the idea, which I find amusing since it was partly their demand for a report which led to one in the first place.

Nevertheless, they were not the only club who had serious issues with the SPFL basically giving itself a clean bill of health. It’s ludicrous. We know that a proper report into our governing bodies could only publish an excoriating verdict. Even this one, something essentially done in-house, came with dozens of recommendations for changes.

Yesterday they said they would publish a report about how they intended to respond to its 41 separate points next month. The six clubs – Sevco, Motherwell, Aberdeen, Livingston, St Mirren and St Johnstone – are not the only ones waiting to find out if this is some sort of snow-job. Fans of clubs all across the country have skin in this particular game.

Where the Hell are Celtic here? Why aren’t we sharing the platform with those six clubs? Do we not believe that SPFL reforms are needed? Are we waiting as they are for answers or are we reverting to type and propping up the regime?

Look, if we suspect that this is yet another Ibrox coup attempt then we should join those demanding answers and make sure that we’re in the lead of the campaign for change instead of leaving it to them. We might believe this is another front in their war with the SPFL board, but what we should really be asking is whether their critique is right or wrong.

Ibrox will not be wrong all the time, that’s the thing. They are not to be trusted and we have many, many issues with them across a wide range of subjects.

But to be standing outside at this moment just because we don’t like them is absolutely barmy, and petty, and small-minded. That we don’t trust them or their motivations is, in fact, all the more reason not to stand and watch as they claim leadership of a progressive cause for themselves, especially if it makes us look like we’re defending the status quo.

It is unconscionable to allow that club to paint itself as visionary reformers whilst we do nothing.

Of all the sins of this current Celtic board, with Lawwell at its helm, this would perhaps be the worst, and it would reach both forwards and into the future and stretch backwards into the past and debates over Resolution 12 and the Nimmo Smith verdict and the failure to change the culture at Hampden. It would ask real questions of our leaders which I think they’d struggle to answer honestly.

There’s no escaping from this.

The SPFL will publish its answer next month, and if that has positive measures in it then the Ibrox club will be able to claim that it has forced the changes that our own board of directors have not. That should shame every single person who sits in our director’s box.

But what might be even worse is if that report is a worthless piece of utter rubbish, as I strongly suspect it will be, and we find ourselves defending that.