SPORT and politics shouldn’t mix, should they? That’s a question that has been posed across decades and the position of the poser has been frequently moved more often than those proverbial goalposts.

But give a politician a chance and there he’ll be – right in the vanguard of the spectating public, if not the actual paying public.

Just look at the two photographs accompanying this article.

David Cameron, Prime Minister, and someone Clegg (sorry Nick Clegg, that’s whatshisnames name) deputy PM. Cambo and Cleggie, partners in the Conservative/Liberal coalition, are pictured schmoozing and oozing their unctuous and dubious charm at separate Olympic events.

London 2012 – and what a marvellous, mesmerising, magnificent Games it has been – got the go-ahead largely because of its pledge to legacy.

There would be lasting beneficial fortune long after the last sponsor’s burger was consumed, or the final burp from a fizzy soft drink evaporated, a mantra repeated insistently to the International Olympic Committee.

Once the Games were won and, then once the Cambo-Cleggie axis embraced power, as far as the London Games were concerned “legacy, legacy, legacy” became almost as ubiquitous as a former PM’s “education, education, education” clarion call.

But isn’t that all a bit rich given it has come from a Government, who, following its cocksure predecessor, sanctioned the selling-off of school playing fields.

Thousands upon thousands of acres of thrilling fields upon which the younger generation could aspire to emulating their track and field heroes and heroines are no longer at the kids’ disposal. That land has gone. This England sporting demi-paradise is more in tune with semi-detachment. Some legacy huh.

And that commitment to legacy sounds even more hollow when you get that paragon of puffer fish-faced politicians, Cambo, declaring that one of the biggest hurdles in discovering future generations of champions was not down to finance, but to the attitude of some teachers.

“Some teachers (are) not wanting to join in and play their part,” said the prime messer-upper, displaying how some posh boys just talk arrant tosh and how their fingers are only on the pulse of a cash-saving corpse.

His asinine statement underlined just how specious Cambo’s “big society” really is. Big only means in terms of profits for the usual suspects, society is merely high-society.

Just consider this. It is his ministers who have jettisoned a plan for school-children to take part in at least two hours of physical education and sport each week. And it’s his coalition Government that has ditched a school sport partnership scheme costing £160 million.

And all that is before plans are due to kick in for elite funding to be cut next year just as our athletes, our youngsters, our next generation of Olympic medallists will be striving to build on the current precious metal rush.

Some will argue that in times of austerity – an austerity, remember, deepened by Government intransigence – that vital resources should not be allocated to sport.

But in feel-good factor alone, what price can anyone put on the uplifting mood that has flared like so much Olympic flame from these Games?

And if Cambo’s economic lieutenant, ossified Osborne, was so on the ball, how come the major sponsors of the current Games were given the opportunity not to pay any tax on any of the products they sold during the duration of the Games? Some of those corporate players have opted not to maximise the benefit of that tax break, but methinks that was only after the loophole was revealed by the media.

So sport and politics don’t mix? By the very appearance of Cambo and Cleggie at the various venues in the Olympic Park they realise how potentially valuable it is to be associated with domestic success, let alone mindful of the “bread and circuses” maxim of ancient Rome, whereby the gladiatorial games were often employed as a way of distracting the masses from the messes their leaders had steered them into.

But as Cambo and Cleggie press the flesh with all the jolly holiday bonhomie they can muster, remember they are also applying the squeeze to the future of sport in this country. Legacy, schemgacy.