A Busted Flush

To call the government's formal abandonment of its gambling super casino plans yesterday a U-turn simply does not do justice to the scale of the climbdown involved in the announcement to MPs by the culture secretary, Andy Burnham. Once upon a time, do not forget, this government envisaged unlimited numbers of such super casinos planted around our islands. Then, when it became clear that most people regarded the arrival of super casinos in their communities with about the same enthusiasm with which they welcome nuclear power stations, the government's goal was scaled back to 96, then to 40, from there to eight, then from eight down to a solitary one, and now - as promulgated by Gordon Brown last summer and formally confirmed by Mr Burnham yesterday - none at all. In anyone's language this all adds up to a headlong and humiliating retreat for a nul-points policy that nobody needed and that only the dishonest or the desperate wanted.

Do not get this wrong. The death of the super casino super-delusion is absolutely terrific news. Mr Burnham looked uncomfortable as he made the announcement, as well he might, but the truth is that almost all parties are agreed about the retreat and Mr Burnham may never make an announcement again that pleases so many people so much, or that reflects so well upon him. The simple truth is that nobody wanted these super casinos - or indeed many of the gambling reforms of which they were the neon crown jewels - except for those who stood to make money out of them and the dazzled deluded dreamers who actually stood to lose everything. Irrespective of whether one approves or disapproves of gambling in its many other contexts, the inconvenient fact is that there are two things that inescapably go with large casinos. The first is that casinos increase rather than decrease the incidence of problem gambling as certainly as the lights flash when you push the buttons on a gaming machine - with all that means for vulnerable individuals and their families. The second is that they act like a honey pot to crooks and crime - with all that means for communities. You can wish it were different and you can do your best to police these problems - and you can probably keep a lid on some of them most of the time if you try very hard. But if you want rid of the problems altogether then you have to get rid of the super casinos too.

It is ironic that Mr Brown first vetoed the plan when he was desperate to differentiate himself from Tony Blair and that Mr Burnham has now killed it off just as Mr Brown has begun to adopt a much more Blairite agenda. Even so, it is a genuine puzzle why the labor government ever got itself into this mess over something so manifestly ill-advised in the first place. The easy answer is to say that New Labor had no intellectual defence against the deregulatory ideology in which the multinational gambling industry wrapped its ambitions. There is some truth in that. But it is also true that the Gambling Act 2005 - and the solitary super casino that it eventually permitted - was the product of an impeccably detailed and careful parliamentary process of draft and committees and debates. It was only when the press started ringing the alarm bells that MPs and ministers began to notice what an unpopular monster they were about to let loose - even though the polling evidence had been telling them for years that this was an unwanted reform.

The Gambling Act is now Hamlet without the prince, but there will still be eight new large and eight new small casinos in towns from Bath to Yarmouth, where minor versions of the major problems the super casino would have created are also likely. The vortex of unlimited online gambling also needs to be addressed. "My instinct is to proceed with caution," Mr Burnham said yesterday. If only his predecessors had shown similar instincts long ago.