After millions of words have been written and spoken, millions of pounds spent, the UK’s new anti-gambling Prime Minister has sounded the death knell for the modern casino entertainment industry. No matter that his own government proposed the plan, no matter that vast amounts of public money have been spent on gambling commissions and panels, on applications by councils making bids to host the new breed of casino, no matter that prospective casino operators were invited to invest heavily in feasibility studies, Gordon Brown knows best.

At a time when strait-laced Singapore, authoritarian China and puritan America are expanding their casino industries secure in the knowledge that supercasinos do bring regeneration to local communities in both steady employment and gaming tax funding of social benefits, the United Kingdom is to turn its back on a sure bet for regeneration in a deprived area of Manchester and the prospect of future regeneration in other areas. The one small bright spark is that Blackpool can now stop bleating about being passed over by the Casino Advisory Panel.

The writing was visible on the wall when the online gambling tax was set earlier this year. Instead of encouraging the online industry to relocate and pay its taxes into the UK coffers as expected, the tax was set high, ensuring that the online gambling operators would remain offshore and not seek UK licences. This will not discourage the British from betting online, there are plenty of reputable Internet gaming operators, so it seems that one man’s moral indignation over gambling must take precedence over additional state income.

It is to be hoped that Gordon Brown’s moral indignation will extend to altering the rules that allow children to gamble on gaming machines in arcades, to the fruit machines in pubs and the FOBTs installed in bookmakers on every high street. All are far more likely to encourage problem gambling than stringently regulated supercasinos in entertainment complexes, and offer nothing in the way of regeneration. Victory, however, could be claimed by the present casino industry, which will now reign supreme across the country with very little of the competition that would have promoted a better standard of service. (E-07.12.07)

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