SPORT and politics should not mix, goes a saying as old as former Chancellor Denis Healey himself.

We know that’s not true because the two pastimes – sometimes it’s difficult to fathom which is the most important, influential and even impactful – frequently collide.

Think of the “Bodyline” Ashes confrontation of the 1930s, the Basil D’Oliveira affair that split the cricket establishment in the 1960s, the Black Power symbolism at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, numerous Olympic Games boycotts, Kerry Packer’s breakaway cricket circuit in the mid-1980s, Heysel, Bradford and Hillsborough in football.

Those were all, some still are, painful, plaintive, raw subjects which massively engaged, embarrassed and exposed the body politic.

But there’s a more insidious and insipid – if less taxing – influence in the relationship between sport and politics, one that makes this observer heartily sick to his half-time cup of Bovril.

Cast your minds back less than a week to a glorious summer day at Wimbledon when domestic tennis’ biggest back-clutching monkey was at last thrown off.

Andy Murray ended 77 years of Wimbledon introspection and obsession by becoming the first British winner of the men’s singles crown since Fred Perry.

But even before the three-set conquest of world number one Novak Djokovic was confirmed, the spectre of bandwagon jumping was clearly evident.

Whether it was part of the BBC’s new-found remit to be kind to the powers that be, the cameras could barely get their collective scrutiny off the pink-faced visage of David Cameron in the Royal Box, populated by other free-loaders, sorry politicians, and slebs.

Seated amid the PM – whatever your political persuasion, should those initials rather stand for principle manipulator? – there were genuine sporting heroes like Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg of precise Wimbledon tennis reknown, and Sir Chris Hoy, serial gatherer of Olympic cycling gold medals.

So why focus so much on the shiny visage of a PM, who you sense was just trying to outdo his stalking-horse rival Boris Johnson in the bandwagon-leaping on stakes.

Boris, of course, very nearly hijacked the Olympic Games and all its brilliance in London last year as his own brainchild.

Now Cameron’s spin-doctors have obviously taken note of the wild-haired Mayor of London and done the same, hitching their number ten tenant to British Wimbledon’s biggest success story for three generations. It’s not wiff-waff Boris, but it does create a racquet and Cameron, to be fair – did I just write that? – has been known to wield a racquet like one of his predecessors, ‘call me Tony Blair’.

But Sardonicus fixed-grin fixation was not to end with Cameron’s histrionics in the Royal Box.

Barely had Murray been able to celebrate his achievement when he was suited and booted and on the steps of the black shiny door in Downing Street.

Looking as awkward as a schoolboy being pressed by out-of-shot scallies to rap on the door then run away, Murray was smiling for the cameras when out rushed the PM quicker than a ball-boy, all full-beam and helloing with gusto at the Scottish champion.

The paps snapped, another photo-opp was created and completed, and then Cameron ushered Murray to turn around for an up close and personal escort into the Tardis of ministerial power.

We are not privy, or rather privy counsel, to what went on behind the black door, but even so Cameron was now on a roll.

Murray, he said, was undeniably deserving of a knighthood, though such presumption was surely a case of jumping the gun, sorry, ceremonial sword.

The 26-year-old tennis ace seemed just slightly perplexed by it all.

But this is how successful sports stars are regarded by our elected representatives.

Just as they treat the majority of us with disdain, if not downright contempt, so they are acutely aware of howg oiling up to a sports star can yield benefit.

Not only are they bathing in the reflected dazzle of their new bezzy mates, they are also capitalising on the feelgood factor that sports’ endeavours can generate.

The aforementioned Blair was one of the first to realise the power of hitching a ministerial wheel to a sporting bandwagon.

Witness the 2005 Ashes-winning England team, who were all accorded gongs as well as a visit for drinks and canapes, no doubt, in the backyard, sorry rear gardens, of Downing Street.

Since then few politicians have been averse to a bit of brown-nosing sports royalty, Johnson being a prime example.

Now he has been joined in the union of unctuousness by the Prime Minister.

Yet it is so ironic that sports stars are pursued, feted and garlanded when successive administrations have done very little to ensure sports facilities are increased in this country.

If anything an increasingly absurd austerity programme has bit savagely into leisure and sports service up and down the country.

In the country’s education system, where sport is extolled as a keen part of any correct curriculum, the successful Schools’ Sports Partnerships were jettisoned while school playing-fields attract the envious eyes of developers, politics and spoilsports do mix.