News From The Big Tent
El Gordo's long game
People are talking "the long game" this morning, as the Tory lead over Labour remains stubbornly large. 2010 is looking increasingly like the most plausible election date - ie, as late as possible. One interesting development: El Gordo's apparent appetite for curbing some of the relaxations to licensing laws.
As he prepared to take over from Tony Blair last year, the mood music coming from Brown's camp was that he'd be taking an axe to some of the more tasteless bling that had marked the final Blair years - licensing laws, super-casinoes and the like. Things went quiet, but maybe we're now in for a period of Presbyterian probity. Could Prohibition save Brown?
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Presbyterian probity ???
"Today, yet again, parliament confronts one of the most bizarre features of the Labour decade - the determination to build more casinos. The unlucky Andy Burnham is the minister to bring this rum business back to the House (though he could have Just Said No).
A month before Tony Blair stepped down, and was rushing through unfinished "reforms", the gambling bill was thrown out by the Lords - but here it comes bouncing back again. This may surprise people who thought they had heard that Gordon Brown was cleansing casinos from the Augean stables he inherited. It was a refreshing moment, when the Brown "change" seemed so authentic, with a totemic ring: goodbye funny money from Las Vegas, welcome to the morals of the manse.
When the new prime minister told MPs he would review casinos for poor areas, to see "whether regeneration might be a better way of meeting their needs", most people assumed casinos were toast. But apparently not. Burnham will press ahead today with the 16 new casinos, eight large and eight "small" - even the smallest will be four times larger than any of the existing 140."
From Polly T's piece today.