The State of Play inquiry, which is run by the UK House of Commons’ digital, culture, media and sport select committee, recently announced the five areas on which it will focus in 2026-27. One of these is: why are our Eurovision entries so bad? The word used by the chair, Dame Caroline Dinenage, was “dismal”, which is parliamentary speak for “shit”.

The evidence is all around. With the exceptions of Sam Ryder (second in 2022) and Jade Ewen (fifth in 2009), the UK has bumped along the bottom of the table in recent years, coming last in 2021 and 2026, second last in 2023 and 19th and 18th in 2025 and 2024 respectively. In four of those cases, the artist received no public votes at all.

Mindful that parliamentary inquiries always take roughly 10 times longer than seems reasonable and cost whatever number of pounds they ought to multiplied by a million, I’m going to suggest a couple of sub-categories. Why do all the other countries hate us, irrespective of the entry?And why do we seem to enjoy it so much that they do? Some of this is about core British values and some of it is about geopolitical orientation. Sometimes those things........

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