Why waste another fortune on Wembley just as the Dome is kicked into touch?

No powers of clairvoyance are required to tell the fortune of the plans for a new national football stadium at Wembley – we have the advantage of hindsight, looking back at the Millennium Dome.

This is not a good week to sign the deal for the financing of the plans for Wembley, which the Football Association and the German bank Westdeutsche Landesbank hope to do today. On Wednesday Charles Falconer, in his last act as Dome minister, signed another deal that finally gets the embarrassing round tent off the Government's hands.

But at what a price. For all Tony Blair's brave talk, in the new dawn of pre-millennial Labour, of recouping the public money sunk in the grand project, that price has turned out to be zero. Or, in the short term, less than zero, with consultants' fees still to pay and the costs of maintenance until planning permission is granted. Or, as Lord Falconer coyly put it, "no specific price" is being paid by the Meridian Delta consortium to acquire the Dome and its land.

Even over a period as long as 20 years, the Government expects a return of only two-thirds of the £800m that has been spent so far as its share in the profits of developing the site. What is more, most of that value will arise from the Tube link, which was constructed at even greater public expense to provide high-speed access to central London. The taxpayer should have been entitled to a share in the profits of development in any case. As Lord Falconer said, the value of the site lies not in the amount of land but in planning permission and transport links.

Yet, even as the Prime Minister's former landlord limps off to his next assignment – sorting out the criminal justice system – a different minister seems determined to learn nothing from the disaster. Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, should have noticed long ago the similarities between Wembley and the Dome. It is a plan driven by symbolism for a structure with no clear function – and funded to an unacceptable extent by lottery money. Even the symbolism has been weakened by the fact that the famous twin towers form no part of the design of the new stadium. For all the historical associations of the name of an otherwise featureless north London suburb, the stadium itself plays no necessary part in the life of the national game, as its closure over recent years has shown.

The idea that it should be a national centre for several sports collapsed long ago when the draughtspeople got out their rulers and decided that an athletics track would not fit. Meanwhile, nearly every city in England – and Wales – have or will soon have one or more new or refurbished stadiums capable of staging international events.

The success or – how to put this? – sub-optimal performance of Sven Goran Eriksson's team in Japan and Korea will not be affected in the slightest by the fact that the national side has no fixed abode back home. There is considerably more national pride in the magic of David Beckham's second metatarsal than there is in the hallowed turf on which England once won a legendary victory.

It is not too late to save the £120m of lottery money that – as we learnt with the Dome – is not "free", because it can always be spent on something more worthwhile. Today's deal is only a "heads of agreement", with the real bargaining still to come.

Ms Jowell, do the brave thing Mr Blair failed to do with the Dome and pull the plug on the new Wembley.