Wembley needs our can-do spirit

A Royal Commission, they say, takes minutes and wastes years. Mr Carter has not faced such an awesome task. All he had to do was to get Tony Blair through an election. Now he's done that, the truth can be told, and yesterday it was. Carter isn't going to say what should happen at all. His role, to use another of New Labour's gibberish phrases, was to "scope the options". What does that mean? Answers on a postcard to Alastair Campbell Esq, Downing Street, and all contributions will be gratefully received since there's no reason to think he knows either.

The chances are that after this little bit of scoping the whole thing will be dumped back in the lap of the FA, no further forward than it was when Crozier wrote his letter last May, or when Bates got the push last autumn.

Even Pontius Pilate would have had the grace to blush at such a grotesque abdication of responsibility. But not apparently Mr Carter's new boss, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, who anyway is rumoured to have told a private meeting she didn't want a national stadium at all.

But it's a bit late in the day for subversive thoughts like that. Some £120 million of Lottery money has already been spent on acquiring the site. And if it's not to be used as a national stadium, the land won't be worth more than a fraction of that. Worse still, though for obvious reasons they won't publish the figures, the chances are that professional fees and other costs already incurred have driven the total up to £180 million, maybe more.

Having begun with a quote from Karl Marx, what about one from Groucho - a million here, a million there and soon you'll be talking real money. Yes indeed, and is it all to disappear down the same black hole as the Dome loot?

Is there no shame left in Whitehall, no sense of the imperative to deliver on public pledges, not least to the global audience to which these promises were made?

Mrs Jowell's predecessor was all in favour, though he also started the rot with potential investors by jibbing at some of the details. So the Government really can't just walk away now.

And if it's OK to spend tens of millions funding Mr Mugabe's land grab, and hundreds of millions sustaining largely bogus asylum seekers, is it too much to ask for a modest helping hand for a project that is now about national pride?

Not the least farcical element of the present mess is that other cities have now reentered the fray, reopening the issue as to whether the stadium should be built in their back yard. Talk about back to the future, that's where we were before the Tories left office in 1997.

I'm in no doubt Birmingham could provide a perfectly good national stadium, as could other places. But when the decision for Wembley was made, they missed the boat because Solihull Council, where the site was located, said they would refuse planning permission. And there's no reason at all to reopen the matter now so much effort has gone into validating Wembley. I know it's unfashionable to speak up for London. We're supposed always to be ready to let others in, but the fact remains Wembley has served the nation well since 1923. It's a global brand in a way Solihull can never be. Besides after so much blood, sweat and tears, surely we should all agree with Macbeth: to return would be as tedious as to go o'er.

The Dome, the British Library, the never-ending farce of Terminal 5, the roll call of great British fiascos is big enough already without Wembley. The question is, are we still a can-do society or not? The fate of the Wembley project will surely give us the answer.