Unlike a few others, I was prepared to give Andy Burnham the benefit of the doubt – and hold back on any trenchant criticism of him until he actually did something wrong. Well, just three weeks into his premiership that moment has finally arrived.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced that councils will get new powers to block new betting shops, bracketing them together with vape shops, ‘dodgy businesses’ and ‘rogue operators’. ‘The rise of vape shops, betting shops and rogue operators have replaced the shops, services and community spaces that people are crying out for’ he declared.
Burnham’s pearl-clutching disdain of betting shops shows how alienated Labour is still from its old working-class roots, in spite of its change of leader
Well, I don’t know much about vape shops as I don’t ‘vape’– but I do know about betting shops having spent many happy hours in them watching horse-racing action from all over the country and beyond. And quite frankly, I find Burnham’s view of them to be insulting.
He is not only quite wrong to claim that there is something undesirable about betting shops, he is wrong to imply that they are not, nor could they ever be, ‘community spaces’. Our old Tote shop in a western suburb of Oxford was a hub of our community, for the young and old alike. The manageress Dilly – a lovely lady – regularly organised coach trips to the races for the punters. I remember particularly enjoyable visits to Bath and Salisbury. We would have a picnic by the side of the coach on arrival before enjoying the race action. There was great camaraderie. I even won a little Tote radio in a competition on one of the trips. Is this the sort of activity that Andy Burnham regards as ‘dodgy’?
