Why the UK is NOT the victim of a Europe-wide conspiracy at Eurovision:

1) UK may not be part of a voting bloc, but neither are Germany, Austria, Portugal, Israel or Netherlands, all of whom won convincingly in the past 10 years

1a) Voting blocs do exist, but are mostly the result of shared musical culture in Scandinavia, the former Yugoslavia, the former USSR, etc and despite all this, no one bloc has the power to boost an entry to the top without a lot of additional Europe-wide public and jury support

2) If Brits thought their songs were being that badly underrated, don’t you think that they would be actively supporting their entry through domestic streams and sales? The last #1 UK Eurovision entry was in 1996! And they haven’t entered the top 40 since the Spotify era started

3) If the UK really was blackballed in Eurovision for political reasons, don’t you think you’d see this manifest outside the contest? UK has the largest music industry in all of Europe, with Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa and Adele and such dominating in Europe

3a) This is not to say they have to send out A-listers to win (most winners nowadays are newbies from X Factor and The Voice and stuff), but simply to show that the supposed disgust towards the UK in Eurovision doesn’t translate to any other arena of European music culture

4) Closely related is the “we could send Adele and still lose” argument, which is predicated on the notion that an A-lister would be ENTITLED to win, when the UK has a history of sending big names without winning (Cliff Richards, Mary Hopkin, Olivia Newton-John, The Shadows, etc)

4a) Ironically even back then many of these artists complained about the BBC giving then little creative control and hating their entries as a result, a problem many British participants still experience today

5) The excuse behind this conspiracy always seems to be changing for Brits as well, whether it’s Iraq War, Syrian War, Brexit, you’d think that no other Eurovision country had ever been critiqued for its political decisions

5a) This argument truly falls apart looking at Israel’s recent win again. Do Brits really think there are more people boycotting votes for UK than would be boycotting votes for Israel, arguably the world’s most controversial country?

5b) Really ask yourself: do you really care about your opinion on Putin’s authoritarianism when watching the Russian act? Orbán’s attacks on democracy during the Hungarian act? For most the answer will be no, and why should Europeans’ views on Brexit or whatever be any different?

5c) It’s worth noting that Wogan is quoted as saying the UK is stifled by the votes at Eurovision as far back as 1998, despite getting their fifth win in 1997 and coming second in 1992, 1993 and 1998. In other words, the excuse has been around even since UK was successful.

6) It’s not even true that the UK never sees any support from the public or the juries either; looking at recent top 10 placements on either side or overall, they came 5th overall in 2009 (10th public, 3rd jury), 11th in 2011 (5th televote) and 15th in 2017 (10th jury)

6a) I know some of these aren’t all that inspiring placements but they show that the UK does in some years get support from either or both votes. Additionally, I think Brits forget that even 15th is 15 out of 40 countries including the semis, not just 15 out of 26 finalists

7) Brits also seem to have this mindset that they should be winning every couple of years, a feat that even modern Eurovision kings Sweden fail to achieve. Maybe possible in the old days, but in the current field of ~40 countries, your bare annual winning chances are 2-3%

7a) Besides, UK’s current 22 contest “losing” streak is dwarfed by the 40-50 year losing streaks accrued by Spain, France, Austria, Netherlands, and the latter two broke their streaks recently!

7b) And it’s not like those countries had particularly bad international reputations throughout their droughts, they simply didn’t have the winning songs for a great number of years, and this has been very true of the last 22 UK entries

7c) I’d also like to point out that in the past ten years Italy has been widely regarded as one of the contest’s powerhouses, and yet they haven’t won since 1990! Winning ≠ success

In conclusion: I hope you can see that annual viewer boycotts are not at the root of UK’s recent failure at Eurovision. The reality is that UK tends to send uninspired songs that struggle on the UK charts and would struggle to pass the semis if UK participated in those.

The usual arguments are so engrained in British perception of the contest that it’s almost a meme in UK and around the continent, and was even mentioned in the Eurovision film! But even that is far from enough to stop the majority of viewers evaluating British entries fairly

If UK wants better results (never mind a win), it’s truly on BBC to pick more interesting songs and artists, and then give them the staging they deserve on the night. Otherwise the bad results will rumble on, along with the conspiracies around them.

I hope this thread can act as a reference for those who are seeking the arguments necessary to counter the dominant narrative of British failure at modern Eurovision!