Rishi Sunak Puts Pieces in Place for Great British Chess Revival

(Bloomberg) -- Since becoming prime minister last year, Rishi Sunak has tried to get Britain to embrace its nerdy side. Next up is a push to get the country’s youth into chess.

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The British premier this month plans to announce proposals to build interest in the game by expanding instruction in schools and installing 100 chess tables in public parks, people familiar with the matter said. The announcement is due at a ceremony featuring an over-sized set on 10 Downing Street’s lawn, they added.

Sunak will also earmark £500,000 ($640,000) of funding for the English Chess Federation, they said. The grant to help send teams to international tournaments would be the first time the UK government has financially backed its national squads. Sunak’s office declined to comment.

While England was historically a strong chess competitor — ranking second to the Soviet Union in the 1980s — it has since slipped in world rankings and now lies 13th for men and 27th for women, according to the International Chess Federation. While many top chess nations recognize the game as a sport, the UK doesn’t, which means the ECF can’t access Sport England’s £250 million spending pot.

The chess push is part of a broader effort by Sunak to boost mental skills and numeracy, including a proposal earlier this year for all pupils in England to study mathematics until the age of 18. The former Winchester College head boy and Stanford University MBA dreamed as a child of becoming a Jedi knight and has a reputation for immersing himself in the granular detail of policy.

Code Breaking

Sunak’s efforts to change Britain’s attitude toward interests perceived as brainy face funding challenges, as well as cultural ones. The Conservative-led government has yet to flesh out plans to expand math education after critics pointed out the nation’s cash-strapped schools already lack enough good-quality teachers in the subject.

Labour leader Keir Starmer, whose party currently enjoys a double-digit lead in public opinion polls, has outlined competing education plans that highlight communications ability. Still, a love of chess is one area of common ground with the opposition bench, since Starmer’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is a former junior chess champion.

ECF President Dominic Lawson said in an interview that chess can help kids get ahead. “In today’s age, national success relies on our minds and the government is now taking the idea that chess is a great training ground for mental ability seriously,” he said.

Lawson — whose father, Nigel, was Chancellor of the Exchequer and a political hero of Sunak’s — recalled telling the prime minister that mathematician Alan Turing and his colleagues who cracked the Nazis’ enigma code during World War II played high-level chess. One of them, Hugh Alexander, was twice British chess champion.

Treasury Chess Set

“It was military brainpower, principally the code-breakers, as much as manpower, that helped win the Second World War,” Lawson said.

Chess has a deep history of support among Westminster politicians. Former Conservative staffer Jamie Njoku-Goodwin used to carry a roll-up chess mat around Parliament, challenging journalists, politicians and fellow aides to matches. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on chess is currently headed up by the Tory MP Giles Watling, a former TV and theater actor.

Sunak himself was won over by the benefits of chess while he was chancellor, Lawson said. His former office at 11 Downing Street still contains a bespoke playing set given to former Chancellor George Osborne when he hosted a world chess championship reception in 2013.

The prime minister signaled he was working on an initiative to get more Britons involved in chess on a visit to Washington in June, when he spied a chess set during a tour of a school in the US capital.

“It’s a great skill and it’s really good for helping you think and it’s a great hobby,” he said.

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