Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Alan Tolhurst, and this week we'll look at the vexed issue of football governance,

as the plans for an independent regulator to help protect the beautiful game have stalled,

despite financial problems across the football pyramid threatening the future of clubs at the heart of communities.

We'll meet to discuss that. We have Mike Baker, Director of Advocacy at Campaign Group,

Fair Game, as well as Clive Efford, Labour MP, former Shadow Sports Minister, and member of the

Culture, Media and Sport Committee, alongside my colleague, political reporter here at Politics Home,

Tom Scottson.

So Mike, I'm going to start with you.

Just explain to us what the idea of a football regulator is and kind of why it's really needed and why groups like yours are pushing for a regulator in football.

Well, I think the evidence that a regulator is needed is all around us.

We only had to be at Reading last week to see why.

Yeah, we've had clubs invading the pitch,

protesting against the owners, seeing the club go bust. I mean, this was a club that was in the

Premier League, is now hurtling down towards League 2. But more importantly for Reading fans,

it's the future of the club. Will it continue even to exist?

And when you see that there's been Scunthorpe, there's been South End,

I mean, I could list them Barry, McElspield,

it's an endless flow of failure that puts communities,

breaks their hearts, really, breaks communities' hearts.

I mean, if you see what

happened to Barry and the loss of one of the most traditional, you know, long-standing

...