Why would Labour be anti-racing? 

Enjoying the election? It was a colleague from my days with CNN who alerted me during Donald Trump’s first contest to an obituary notice in a US local newspaper which summed up the feelings of many: ‘Faced with the prospect of voting either for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland chose instead last Sunday to pass into the eternal love of God.’

For British racing the very calling of an election has been a blow. Poor prize money levels compared with its international competitors and falling attendances have been further imperilled by the cutback in wagering occasioned by the clumsy affordability checks involved in proposed gambling reforms. To help racing survive, the government had instituted a review of the Levy system on bookmakers’ profits which keeps the show at least partly on the road. A government-brokered deal between those involved was always going to be tricky. The bookmakers were represented by the Betting and Gaming Council; racing’s interests were represented as ever by the British Horseracing Authority, the Jockey Club, the Racecourse Association, the Racehorse Owners Association, the National Trainers Federation and the Arena Racing Company – a group with an innate tendency to produce both compromisers and hard-liners. Not surprisingly, the BGC chief executive, Michael Dugher, declared that the guiding role which needed to be played by the BHA’s chair, Joe Saumarez Smith, and its chief executive, Julie Harrington, was like ‘herding cats’.

Racing wanted a new Levy rate, increasing racing’s take by some £30 million a year and an expansion of the Levy’s scope to bets placed by British punters on racing overseas. The bookmakers were adamantly opposed to that extension and wanted to focus on their overall contributions, including media rights payments and their sponsorship of festivals and races. Despite all that, a deal was apparently close – some of racing’s negotiators believed it had been done – but then on 22 May Rishi Sunak announced a July election and it all fell apart. Now the process will have to be resumed by a new administration in which we do not even know if there will be a Department for Culture, Media and Sport or whether that department would still be responsible for gambling legislation.

If the polls are correct and the next government is a Labour one led by Sir Keir Starmer, there is no reason to suppose it will be anti-racing. Labour’s leader attended the 2023 Derby; his wife, Victoria, is said to be a racing enthusiast; and they have a picture of Doncaster racecourse in their home. But there is no reason either to expect that a Labour administration would be more pro-racing, despite the 200,000 jobs dependent on the industry. Labour MPs have been just as vociferous as moralistic Tories in their condemnations of problem gambling, and more critical on issues such as the use of the whip in racing.

Then there is the old boy network question. Racing used its social contacts with the likes of Lord Cameron to get Rishi Sunak’s No. 10 staff involved in pressuring the DCMS to do a deal. Not only did that cause resentment among civil servants, it enabled the bookmakers to claim that racing was revealing a sense of entitlement which will hardly help its prospects with a new government. Such back channels are unlikely to exist with Starmer in Downing Street. By contrast, in the arguments about racing’s future finances it may not prove irrelevant that Michael Dugher is a former Labour MP.

This column was to have been a report on Goodwood’s family day racing last Sunday. Alas a malevolent curry postponed travelling plans but what I would have been checking out was the parade ring appearances. Trainer Ralph Beckett, to his credit, has joined paddock expert Ken Pitterson and commentator Richard Hoiles in castigating his fellow trainers who don’t send their charges into the parade ring on time, so denying punters time for a decent look at the horses before a race. By letting the laggards get away with it, the BHA is diminishing the racecourse experience – and a sport which paid proper regard to its customers would have them parade in number-cloth order too when possible.

Sometimes, though, there is temptation. Clive Brittain trained the wonderful but temperamental filly Pebbles, who would easily get upset by racecourse preliminaries. He confessed when we were putting together his biography that before she won the 1000 Guineas he saddled Pebbles in the car park. Having forewarned jockey Philip Robinson, Clive then broke the pre-race parade which he knew she would resent by pretending to fall over as he led her. Before she won the Eclipse at Sandown he bought the farrier a drink, pretended that Pebbles had loosened a shoe and kept her in the doping box by the edge of the parade ring undergoing imaginary repairs until the others were on the way to the start. ‘We didn’t break the rules,’ he said. ‘We just bent them.’ But then Clive always had the charm to get away with anything.