Things get better — for betting

In a free society, people are at liberty to gamble, much as they are at liberty to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and engage in other practices which, if indulged to excess, can have terrible consequences. Gambling has wrecked lives and enlivened others. The morality of a casino is in the eye of the beholder: one man’s den of iniquity is another’s harmless pleasure-dome. A government’s responsibility is to provide a framework of regulation that meets Parliament’s approval, and then to stand well back.

On this reckoning, the proposed super-casino in Manchester is hardly a threat to western civilisation. The planned complex sounds truly ghastly: a site of 5,000 square metres packed with up to 1,250 fruit machines, a shrine to low-rent leisure pursuits. But it is revealing that the residents of Greenwich and Blackpool are so disappointed by their failure to win the contest to build the first such super-casino. They were evidently persuaded that jobs and an economic boost were at stake. Now these disappointed contenders, and other areas, must await the results of the Manchester pilot. If Las Vegas is coming to Britain, it is coming very slowly.

Why, then, has the announcement spawned such controversy and anger? This is scarcely a puritan country: Britons tend to recoil when Roundheads trample upon their liberties, and have a proud tradition of not confusing peccadillo with sin. But the super-casino story has left a sour taste in the mouth for reasons unconnected with the gambling industry and the relative merits of Manchester, Blackpool and Greenwich.

As much as anything, politics is about the tone a government sets for the nation and the spirit which it embodies. Margaret Thatcher not only transformed Britain’s economic prospects and place in world; she also created a culture of aspiration and national confidence that proved infectious.