Simon Jenkins: Prescott can become curator of the Wilberforce museum
Anschutz and big Australian, South African and American casino interests have reportedly spent some $100m on a campaign to open up Britain to big-time gambling. Tony Blair’s government was targeted as “the soft moral underbelly of Europe” for an industry barred from most European countries. The campaign of the British Casino Association was led by the redoubtable Lady Cobham. Despite minimal public demand for super-casinos, Blair was persuaded to move gambling from the puritanical Home Office to the more malleable Culture Department. The latter leapt into bed with the gamblers as swiftly as it did with the brewers and the BBC. Officials cruised the casinos of the world arm-in-arm with MPs, outrageously in the pay of gaming lobbyists. The head of Whitehall’s gambling division, Gideon Hoffman, even offered to leave and work for those who were lobbying him. This being modern British government, nobody batted an eyelid at all this.
Posted on July 7th, 2006 at 10:00 am
It must be asked: did you recently, or have you ever, voted for New Labour?
Nope. In 1997 I was in Australia and thus innoculated to the mass psychosis that swept them to power. In 2001 and 2005, I went for the Lib Dem protest vote. Next time, I’m staying at home.
Then you leave this court without a stain on your character.
In 1997 I thought that I was voting for ‘Labour’.
Andrew, I’ve made this point before. Labour campaign literature tends to have the “New” missing to avoid, I presume, frightening the diehards. Once the inconvenience of the election is out of the way, they go back to being “unremittingly New Labour”.