Politics & Power Quote by Steve Blake

The line reads like a preemptive strike against the modern sports-to-politics pipeline, where any public stance gets squeezed into a two-team jersey. Blake’s intent is to claim ideological misfit as a feature, not a bug: don’t tag me as right-wing because of my “social issues,” and don’t tag me as left-wing because of my economics. It’s a bid for control over the frame, delivered in the cautious, qualifying language of someone who knows how quickly a soundbite can be turned into a headline.

The subtext is less “we transcend labels” than “labels are being used to police us.” The repeated “could be considered by some” does two things at once: it distances Blake from the most radioactive interpretations (hard-line Tory, far-left) while also admitting he’s bumping up against those boundaries. That hedge is telling. Athletes entering political discourse often get punished for certainty; this is the rhetorical equivalent of keeping your guard up.

Context matters: “globalisation” is the loaded bridge term here. Depending on the audience, it can mean elite-driven trade policy, cultural dilution, immigration anxiety, corporate offshoring, or simply a gut-level rejection of remote power. By pairing opposition to globalisation with left economics, Blake is trying to uncouple nationalist sentiment from right-wing economics, and to uncouple social conservatism from free-market orthodoxy. The result is a portrait of politics as a cross-pressured identity, not a neat spectrum - and a reminder that public figures increasingly speak in defensive footnotes because outrage travels faster than nuance.