Coming to terms with Leeds

Leeds isn’t cool. 

Other similar cities have had their “moment”: Liverpool in the early ‘60s and ‘80s, Manchester in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. Leeds hasn't had a moment. 

West Yorkshire should be more closely associated with the British filmmaking New Wave -- Tony Richardson is from Shipley, Keith Waterhouse is from Leeds -- but although some of the best examples were filmed here they tended to be set in general “Northern Land” rather than Leeds (/Bradford/Halifax).

Other cities have their bands. The obvious Manchester and Liverpool ones… Sheffield has Pulp, Human League, even the Arctic Monkeys. 

Leeds has The Kaiser Chiefs, who are too well known to be cool, and The Wedding Present, who probably aren’t well known enough. There was a time in the late ‘90s when the “Superclub” was a thing, and Leeds had a few of those, but tastemakers quickly reclassified them as naff. Bad luck, Leeds.

Having it in Majestyk's, Leeds

Leeds is hard to root for. 

It’s not small enough to be an inspiring underdog. It’s not far enough away to be exotic, like Newcastle. 

And the football team! Everyone hates the football team. Dirty Leeds. Violent Leeds. Racist Leeds. 

A Leeds United Fan

What looks like general dislike of Leeds is actually distaste. It’s just so common.

A terrific counterweight to the anti-Leeds narrative is Promised Land: A Northern Love Story by Anthony Clavane. It’s the story of a city, its football team, and its once large, now dwindling, Jewish population. 

Clavane argues that Don Revie’s Leeds United belong with those other northern influences which made the ‘60s: Harold Wilson, Billy Liar, the Beatles, David Hockney, the Liverpool poets etc etc. 

Yes, Revie’s team. Any reference to which is described by Giles Smith as:

The nuclear option. There is, quite simply, nowhere to go after that. There has never been a more horrible team.

This is an embedded view, deepened by The Damned United: Clough’s beautiful spirit crushed by Revie and Leeds.

There is another version of this story. Leeds, under Revie, went from second division to first division runners up in 3 years, winning the title four years later. A team which replaced its kit so it could be more like Madrid. A team with ambition who did everything necessary to win.  And why shouldn't they? Why should they settle for being the team the rightful winners play against?

This Leeds was an insurgent, revolutionary force, loathed by the establishment. Why does public opinion side with the establishment on this one? Clavane tells us the FA (public school Corinthians) were:

Appalled by Revie. They considered his attempt to develop a ruthless, fiercely competitive, hard-headed winning machine to be, at best, ungentlemanly. At worst, they claimed, it heralded the game’s loss of innocence.

This Leeds reminds me of Chelsea. Chelsea were popular when they were losing gallantly under Ranieri. When Mourinho took over and they too became a winning machine, the greatest team of the modern era, people went off them. It doesn’t do to upset the natural order. Chelsea had money too, of course, but how else are you going to do it nowadays?

Don't they look young.

Anyway, Revie eventually left Leeds and they became mediocre (and still disliked). 

Actually, for a while they were both good and popular. In the late 90s and early ‘00s they had a dashing young team terrorising Europe. That team was part of the North’s last “moment”, when its cities made a play to turn themselves into city break destinations, the Superclubs were dominant and London seemed a little bit staid. Clavane is very good at tying this all together, with the team part of a rebranded outwards-looking Leeds.

Then the club imploded, to widespread delight. It's worth considering what exactly it was that people were so happy about.

The Fall of Leeds was presented as some kind of early noughties morality tale, a parable of greed, excess and hubris. How deluded to think they could build a team to match the citadels of Manchester and London, let alone Milan and Madrid.

Now the South and the establishment has reasserted itself entirely.

Let us not fall into the traps set by the forces of conservatism. Let us not disdain Leeds. Let us celebrate Leeds the Upstart! Leeds the Dreamer! Leeds the Beautiful!

A few such moments.

1) One month in ’72 Revie’s Leeds beat Nottingham Forest 6-1, Manchester United 5-1 and Southampton 7-0. The last of these is famous. You’ve seen the clips before, but they’re always worth a couple of minutes of your time. The goals are on the first video. Not great quality, but you can see what’s going on. (Music by T-Rex, the least Leeds band ever.) I’d suggest you go straight to the second video and soak up the showboating (from 6 minutes).  

 2) Some Cantona greatness from his season at Leeds (so not repeated beyond impact); 21 seconds in. 

3) And that time when for a few weeks in the mid-90s Tony Yeboah was the best player in the world.

Pick sexier leaders and save democracy

If Boris Johnson, George Galloway and Nigel Farage have taught us anything, it's the enduring British affection for a  rogue.

There's something deep within us which will forgive you anything, provided you look like you'd buy a round in the pub, could share a joke with a taxi driver, and know one end of a woman from the other.

You could call it charm. Or confidence.

Or, brace yourself, sexiness. You may recoil in horror from the idea, but truth is, these men do have sex appeal. Maybe not to you, but they've done well for themselves.

You may hate them, but it's hard to deny they have a certain alpha-maleness; and it's silly to deny that people respond to that.

Now, here's a problem.

Those who choose the leaders, the political class, the media, are the most immune to the charms of the alpha male (or female) so their success always comes as a surprise. The (culturally) middle class tend to be resentful of charisma, mainly because in its youth it was an unpopular, though self-regarding, spod.

The working and upper classes hate the cultural middle class. Sad, but true.

It's not jealousy; it's because the (cultural) middle class are the least sexy and least charming of all classes. Indeed, they deny the existence of sexiness or charm. They look for their leaders to display things like ideological purity, moral seriousness, all the while wearing terrible ill-fitting suits. Outside of the group this is very confusing.

To the cultural middle class Ed Miliband as Labour leader makes sense. To everyone else it is baffling, verging on insulting. THIS GUY? You are JOKING!

Really?

The electorate doesn't give a fuck about the Labour leader's credentials - they want to be swept off their feet by someone dashing, someone who'll repeatedly let them down then look them in the eye, and make them feel like there's no one else in the world but them. A wink. I can't stay mad at you.

Who in the Labour party can you imagine seducing anyone? I mean, other than a drunk researcher on the last evening of a conference. Blair's problem was not his transgressions - it was his protestations of wide-eyed innocence. If he'd managed a wink, a shrug, a leak of that Wendi Deng thing, he'd still be in power.

We can't let the fringe parties (UKIP, Respect, Conservatives) have the monopoly on charisma. We need sexy bastards in the mainstream. Are there any out there? Suggestions in the comments.