Keir Starmer has finally done something right – even a broken clock is right twice a day | Other | Sport

Keir Starmer has finally made a decision worth applauding. This week, he stepped in to help save the World Snooker Championship from being shipped overseas.

National and local government will fork out £35million towards the £45m transformation of the Crucible Theatre, with private investors picking up the remaining £10million. It is a decisive intervention to ensure snooker’s biggest prize stays put in Sheffield until 2045.

It’s a significant sum to invest in snooker, a sport that has struggled to recapture the heights of its 1980s heyday.

But it is also the right decision.

In Starmer’s case, the old adage applies: even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Let’s be clear about what’s actually happening. The Government is not handing millions to promoters like Barry Hearn or to the World Snooker Tour. Instead, it is investing in infrastructure and in a city that benefits enormously from hosting the sport’s biggest event.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has confirmed a £10m contribution, with the wider funding package supporting a venue that delivers real economic value.

The championship generates £3m for Sheffield in just three weeks each year, supporting hospitality, sustaining local businesses, and crucially, protecting jobs. With an expanded and modernised Crucible, that figure is only likely to grow.

And in a country where London so often seems to be first in line for government cash, it is a refreshing and long-overdue change to see serious investment directed elsewhere.

Anyone who has visited Sheffield during the tournament can see the impact first-hand. The city comes alive.

At a time when many UK high streets are hollowed out, boarded up or reduced to rows of vape shops, Sheffield offers a rare example of vibrancy and civic pride.

This is exactly the kind of targeted investment the Government should be making.

Snooker remains a distinctly British sport, and allowing its most prestigious event to be exported to Saudi Arabia or China would have been a cultural and sporting misstep. The benefits of this decision will be felt in Sheffield for decades.

And yet, for Starmer, this moment of clarity may have come too late.

Despite finally landing on the right side of an issue, his broader leadership continues to raise questions.

A new poll has predicted that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could win a staggering 2,260 seats at next month’s local elections in England. It could be the biggest victory in decades.

Labour could lose as many as 1,900 seats in what would be their biggest defeat on record.

This week, Reform MPs staged a walkout during Prime Minister’s Questions as Starmer discussed the snooker deal. Farage branded the government a “total abject failure” on Channel crossings and accused the Prime Minister of breaking his promise to “smash the gangs”.

Starmer attempted to brush it off with a joke, quipping that Reform had “realised they are absolutely snookered”.

But the PM is the one who’s gone snooker loopy.

Even he had his head in his hands this week inside the Chambers.

Starmer can look back fondly on this deal as a step in the right direction, a rare example of clear, pragmatic thinking.

But one swallow does not make a summer.

And unless more decisions like this follow, and quickly, Starmer will find this brief win drowned out by a tidal wave of backlash.