When Theresa May came to power the Turf community was full of hope. Had she not been, if only briefly and in partnership, a racehorse-owner herself? Perhaps, then, she might revive the question Margaret Thatcher used to put to her ministers about any intended senior appointment in Whitehall: ‘One of us?’ Sadly, those early hopes are evaporating fast. It is not just that the pound’s collapse since she confirmed that Brexit means Brexit has given foreign owners a 20 per cent advantage at the bloodstock sales. It is fear of the government’s puritanical streak, a streak that has led to a new gambling review and the suggestion that ministers are minded to ban advertisements for gambling before 9 p.m.
Racing depends on gambling, as the Conservative home secretary Rab Butler recognised when he legalised betting shops in the 1960s, and nowadays it depends on TV to build the racing and betting audience. Without the income stream available from bookmakers’ advertising, commercial television will soon lose the appetite for broadcasting racing and racing’s own income will rapidly diminish. To misquote Macaulay, there is no spectacle quite so depressing as the government in one of its periodic fits of morality. To quote him correctly, we should remember his dictum: ‘The Puritan hated bear-baiting not because it gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.’
My own efforts to encourage gambling with our twice-yearly Twelve to Follow have brought happy results in recent years. Last winter’s Twelve to Follow brought us a profit of £101 on a £10 level stake to win. The previous summer’s return was a jolly £328. This summer has been a little leaner. Backing only one where our selections clashed we had an interest in 36 races and ended with a profit of £38, although if Ralph Beckett’s She Is No Lady had not lost by a short head at Sandown at 9–1 that figure would have improved significantly.
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