Eurovision 2018: Does UK entry SuRie stand a chance of winning?

Despite our ‘best’ efforts, the UK has not won Eurovision for some 21 years, when Katrina and the Waves performed ”Love Shine a Light” back in 1997.

What’s worse, the last decade has seen our position in the rankings decline and decline. Jade Ewen holds the best position, having come fifth in 2009. The year before and year after, the UK came stone cold last managing to claw back to 11th when Blue performed with “I Can”.

So, can this year’s contestant – SuRie – do what Josh Dubovie, Engelbert Humperdinck, Bonnie Tyler, Molly, Electro Velvet, Joe and Jake, and Lucie Jones could not: win Eurovision?

Let’s start by looking at SuRie’s entry, “Storm”. The singer from Harlow managed to beat another five artists to represent the UK, the relatively generic pop-song making an impact with the judges, the judges eight selected members of the music industry (including our very own Roisin O’Connor) and the UK public.

Perhaps the best description of “Storm” comes from The Guardian, who called the track “a distillation of EDM and 90s dance that feels slightly dated but has the nefarious sticking power of an ad jingle.” In other words, an unremarkable ear worm. Unfortunately, Eurovision has always favoured those entries that are different – last year the slow Portugease ballad by Salvador Sobral won – and “Storm” certainly is not that.

Of course, Eurovision has never been just about the quality of song; politics has always played a key role. Countries are known to vote for political purposes, with 2016 being the perfect example of when politics was at the forefront of voters minds.

That year, the primary battle was between Ukraine and Russia, the former eventually winning. Jamala performed “1944”, a song about the deportation of Crimean Tatars by the Soviets during World War II, based on her Grandmother’s experience.

The song was seen as particularly timely as the entry followed the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, and many countries were seen as voting in Ukraine’s favour as they disagreed with Russia’s politics. It should also be noted that, due to rules put forward by the European Broadcasting Union, songs may not contain political speech – and “1944” was not seen to breach these.

This year, the UK has a tough job. Not only does our song have very little to distinguish itself from the competition, but we are currently in the throes of Brexit. We have a detailed piece on how Brexit may affect our chances here. Last year, the vote to leave Europe seemingly had little affect as we scored over 100 points and landed in 15th position. However, with things continuing to look bleak, we could find our European neighbours voting against us. Hopefully we won’t score zero points – something we achieved in 2003, partly thanks to our involvement in the Iraq war.

With those two points in mind, what are the actual odds of us winning? To put it bluntly, not good. Not good at all. BetFair have the UK as a firm outsider at 200/1.

Disparagingly, the UK’s entry is also the 2/1 favourite to come last. A spokesperson for Betfair added that the ”first-half draw [is] not helping what has in recent years become a tough night for the UK.”

The favourites to currently win are Israel (3/1) and Cyprus (11/10), the two countries having been neck-and-neck for some time.

Despite the odds, we’ll still be tuning in this weekend to watch Eurovision. Look out for our liveblog and watch along on BBC One starting at 8pm on Saturday.