The recent debate and controversy around this year’s Eurovision Song Contest brought back a conversation I have never quite been able to forget.
It followed an unsuccessful bid to host the event, after which a senior local government officer described the bid itself as a success, suggesting it would have been won had the city had a suitable venue. The comment has stayed with me not because of the bid, but because of what it appeared to reveal about how success is sometimes understood in local government and economic development.
The question it raises is not about ambition. Places should be ambitious. Nor is it about effort, which in most cases is considerable. It is about how success and feasibility are defined when decisions are made.
The concern is not that the bid was unsuccessful. Most bids are. Nor is it that the city was ambitious. Ambition is essential. Rather, it is that an exercise apparently constrained by a fundamental feasibility issue could nevertheless be cited as an example of success.
That raises uncomfortable questions about how judgement is applied in organisations responsible for economic development, regeneration and major projects, and how lessons are actually learned.
If a critical enabling condition is missing from the outset, the most important learning is unlikely to be found in the quality of the bid itself. It lies in whether the proposition was ever genuinely deliverable. From a project and programme management perspective, the absence of a suitable venue is not a minor detail. It is a fundamental feasibility condition.
Difficult questions first
If a city lacks a core requirement to host a major international event, that should be clear at the start of the process, not something explained after a bid fails.
That is not really about Eurovision.
It is about the relationship between ambition, feasibility and delivery, and whether local government has become too comfortable celebrating participation in competitive processes without asking a more difficult question: were we genuinely in a position to succeed in the first place?
Over the past decade, local government has become increasingly shaped by bidding culture. Funding bids, regeneration bids, investment propositions, major events, competitions for national funding and expressions of interest now define much of how opportunity is pursued. Much of this has been driven by central government itself, which has increasingly allocated resources through competitive processes.
The result is a system where organisations have become highly skilled at producing bids. The more important question is whether they are equally skilled at challenging them.
Because a bid can be well written. A shortlist can be achieved. A process can be managed professionally. Significant effort can be invested.
None of this, on its own, demonstrates that a place was genuinely competitive. There is a clear difference between participating in a competition and being ready to win it.
That distinction matters because organisations learn from what they define as success. If participation becomes success in itself, the harder questions about readiness, capability and feasibility risk being lost.
The order of project bid planning
This is where the Eurovision example becomes relevant. The issue was never whether the bid team worked hard or whether the proposal was professionally assembled. It is what it reveals when the absence of a critical enabling condition is treated as an explanation for failure rather than a test of feasibility at the outset.
In robust project and programme management, the sequence is straightforward: feasibility, capability, proposition, bid, competition.
The danger is not ambition
But too often that sequence is reversed. Ambition comes first, the bid follows, feasibility is assumed, and constraints are only fully acknowledged later. The danger is not ambition, ambition is essential. The danger is allowing aspiration to substitute for judgement.
And judgement remains one of the most under-examined aspects of leadership.
Not the ability to write a strategy. Not the ability to assemble partnerships. Not the ability to produce a compelling narrative. But the ability to assess whether the conditions required for success actually exist.
That is often the hardest decision of all. Because sometimes the most competent decision is not to proceed.
As public finances become increasingly constrained and competition for investment intensifies, these questions become more important. Every bid consumes time, capacity, political capital and public resource. Every unsuccessful bid carries an opportunity cost. Every misplaced priority diverts attention from building the underlying conditions that genuinely improve competitiveness: infrastructure, skills, connectivity, institutional capacity and delivery capability.
Governance, judgement and a changing political landscape
This question takes on added significance at a time when many councils are operating under new political administrations. Across England, a significant number of elected members are taking on leadership responsibilities for the first time, often inheriting complex regeneration programmes, capital portfolios and long-term economic development strategies.
In such circumstances, the quality of advice, challenge and assurance within organisations becomes critical. Strong governance depends upon honest assessments of feasibility, capacity and risk. Without them, there is a danger that enthusiasm for opportunity can outpace the conditions required to realise it.
Political leaders are ultimately responsible for decisions. But effective decision-making depends on rigorous analysis and the confidence to challenge assumptions before significant time, money and political capital are committed.
The issue is not simply whether places are ambitious enough. Many are. The question is whether governance systems are robust enough to distinguish between aspiration and readiness. At a time of political transition in many parts of local government, that distinction becomes increasingly important.
Places should be ambitious
They should think big. They should pursue opportunities.
But ambition alone is not a strategy. Strategy is the disciplined alignment of aspiration, capability and delivery.
The most successful places are not those that bid most often, but those that are disciplined enough to know when not to.
