James Lawton: Time, Prime Minister, for a show of courage

Dear Prime Minister,

I guess you feel, given your primary role of saving the world from Saddam Hussein and with the firefighters playing up again, well enough briefed on the vexing little matter of whether or not we go for the 2012 Olympics.

But then having a briefing, even one that Saddam might describe in his rough way as "the mother of all briefings", is one thing. Getting a feeling for a matter, understanding what it really means, is quite another. Making a spark, moving the spirit, that's what an Olympic bid is essentially about. Though it is an element that cannot be ignored, it's not another bit of business calculation. We've had a lot of that. And not much else. We certainly haven't seen you clench your fist and say, "let's go for it".

We've had a glorified costing exercise, and you know what they say about people who know the price of everything?

They say they don't know the value of a damn thing.

No one could fault you for refusing to skim over the realities. You did, after all, send one of your cabinet ministers to check out the form at the horse's mouth, the Olympic president, Jacques Rogge. Unfortunately, all he could say was that a London application would be weighed on its merits. What else could he say if he really wants to close the door on the free-loading culture of his predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch?

You've had two of Britain's greatest Olympians, Sir Steve Redgrave and Lord Sebastian Coe, arguing passionately that on this Thursday morning you should raise rather than lower your thumb. You've had Gerald Kaufman, the chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, pronouncing so bleakly on the subject in the House that you would have to back his capacity to bring additional gloom to a Welsh funeral.

And, in the middle of these conflicting positions, you've had a Conservative MP and committee member, Julie Kirkwood, elect herself the high priestess of fence-sitting. "I'm a sceptical enthusiast," she announced. "Sceptical enthusiast," wow. You wouldn't have wanted too many of those at the Pass of Thermopylae, would you?

In all the circumstances, you may not feel an overwhelming need for another memo on the fine points of whether to go or not to go. But I thought it might just help a little if you knew how it felt to have an Olympics grow up around you. How it lifts the mood of people, well at least quite a lot though not of Mr Kaufman's doleful countenance, and tells them that they belong to a country which still dares to be great ­ still sees beyond the mechanics of living from day to day. People can get a bit of fed up with po-faced politicians telling them what can and can't be done with their own money.

The first time I saw the effect of the Olympics was in Montreal 29 years ago and even though a lot of taxpayers were complaining ­ and some of them still have a little ritual moan when they get the small-change addition to their yearly rates bill ­ the buzz in the city was deafening.

It was also interesting to see the faces of the young African athletes who were ordered home by their governments on the day of the opening ceremony. Many of them wept in disbelief that they had been taken away from something so vital, so thrilling. Why had the great moment of their lives been snatched away? Because politicians in Nairobi and Lagos and Accra had said it should it be so. Even with the Africans gone, and with a hollow feeling in their place, Montreal felt like the centre of the world for a little while, and you knew it had given itself some world-class memories. Of Alberto Juantorena running with unforgettable power, Lasse Viren dominating the running track ­ albeit not without suspicions of being involved in a new trick called blood-doping ­ and Nadia Comaneci scoring perfect 10s.

In 1980 and 1984 the politicians of both West and East tried to wreck the Olympics of Moscow and Los Angeles. Some British newspapers and broadcasters followed the bidding of Downing Street and pulled pictures and positive comments on a dazzling opening ceremony in the Lenin Stadium, and then, four years later, the Soviets played tit-for-tat with Los Angeles.

But the Olympics brought wonderful things to Moscow and Los Angeles. Los Angelenos learned that Romanians, the one Eastern bloc nation to ignore the Moscow-ordered boycott, didn't have pointed heads. Four years earlier Muscovites had made an equally dramatic discovery... sausages with more than a fragment of meat were not a figment of Western imagination. Nor were McDonald's burgers, a fact which provoked queues almost the length of Gorky Street.

Gorbachev got the credit for glasnost ­ but no one should underestimate the role of those sausages. I saw a waitress fold one into a napkin in the restaurant of the Rossiya Hotel and her eyes shone so brightly it might have been a diamond she was taking home to her family.

They put on brilliant shows in Seoul in '88 and Barcelona in '92 and Sydney two years ago. And while no one said that they made the South Korean police less repressive or Catalan politicians heroes of the people or Australia any more charitable to refugees of the wrong complexion, you had to be in those cities to know what the Olympics could do for the pride of ordinary people.

Atlanta in 1986 was rather different. We had a bomb and an FBI frame-up and the overwhelming sense was of a monster trade fair. But then that was the deal in Atlanta. It was more than anything a business enterprise, carefully calculated and that is something to think about, Prime Minister, when the moment of decision comes in 48 hours' time.

When it comes, you may say that the Olympics are too ambitious a project in uncertain times. You may say that economically and logistically, they are simply not a practical proposition, and that any other conclusion would be dishonest, a version of Marie Antoinette's suggestion that the peasants should be given cake when their crying need was for bread... or, perhaps more currently, hospitals and decent education and roads. But, please, say something. Shed sceptical enthusiasm. Say something more than what has been said already. Go beyond the impression that you are terrified of not being seen as a sure-fire winner.

Prudence is good and scepticism has its place. But sometimes so does a bit of nerve and courage, a willingness to fight for something worthwhile which doesn't happen to carry a guarantee of success. The sense here is that all the talk of a London Olympics has been, from the perspective of your Government, something to skirt rather engage. So your fingers were burned in the bidding for World Cup 2006. You saw how the South Africans were carved to pieces in the murk of Fifa politics. So what? Bad stuff happens.

No one wants you to play the role of a sucker. Be as hard-headed as you like in your appraisal of the Olympic challenge. But give us a hint that you care. Go on the front foot, as they say in cricket, if that's not too painful a subject. Yes, I know we're just talking about a sporting event. But it's the biggest one of all, and if Athens can dust down the Acropolis and build a few roads, why not London? Why not a little surge of the spirit, a little distracting dream. Who knows, it may keep some of our minds off the war.

Yours sincerely, James Lawton