Eurovision is a political battlefield, with neon

Volodymyr Zelenskiy wasn't allowed to address the crowd in Liverpool, but the contest was still a four-hour anti-war protest

- Zoe Williams

"The European Broadcasting Union, which organises Eurovision, is like the European Central Bank: whenever it’s called upon to make an important decision, you can rely upon it to make the wrong one, and it’s wholly dependent on the mixture of goodwill and inertia that leads the international community not to go on about it. Its bet is a generalised feeling of “Oh well, it made the wrong call again. Never mind. Better luck next year/ next global financial crisis”, and it’s one that mainly pays off. This time next week we’ll have forgotten that it wouldn’t let Volodymyr Zelenskiy address the contest, in lieu of Ukraine hosting it, because it didn’t want the event politicised. So I just want to pause for one second to remark how dumb that was.

Inevitably, Ukraine was all anyone was talking about: it was the surtext and subtext, from the opening song, Stefania by the Kalush Orchestra, last year’s Ukrainian winners, to a rousing rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone.