Commonwealth Games must be shared UK-wide - John McLellan

I don’t imagine I’m alone in seeing the irony of First Minister Humza Yousaf’s perfectly reasonable observation that Scotland could help host the next Commonwealth Games as "part of something bigger”.

A means for cities across the United Kingdom to pool their resources for the benefit of all? Maybe with some funding from the UK Government? It sounds a bit like the UK as a whole, but never mind.

It will almost certainly fall to the UK to replace Victoria as the host for the 2026 event because of the financial risk involved, and having staged the Games in 2014 and 2018, as well as the London Olympics in 2012, there is no shortage of world-class facilities. Just not all in the one place.

There will still be some who will claim this would have justified the rebuilding of Meadowbank Stadium as an international athletics venue, which would have been the whitest of elephants at vast expense.

But Edinburgh could contribute to a multi-city summer event, with Murrayfield hosting the seven-a-side rugby and the refurbished Commonwealth Pool the diving. Glasgow can offer the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome and the National Hockey Centre, both built for 2014, but Mr Yousaf is absolutely right to rule out the possibility of a lone Scottish bid which would just put the Scottish Government in the same ruinous position as Victoria.

However, like the lame pretence that Edinburgh could stage the Eurovision Song Contest, once again it throws Edinburgh’s lack of a flexible indoor venue capable of staging major events into sharp relief.