In July, Victoria, Lady Starmer was photographed at Royal Ascot, celebrating with friends after backing the winner of the Princess Margaret Stakes. Lady Starmer, whose grandmother lived near Doncaster racecourse, is a keen follower of flat racing, a passion she apparently shares with her husband. In 2024, the Prime Minister flew home from Washington D.C. to attend Doncaster’s St Leger meeting and told reporters: ‘There aren’t many better days out than the races in the sunshine.’

So it’s odd that Keir Starmer and his government appear to be doing all they can to kill off horse racing. Swingeing tax rises on the gambling industry, introduced in Rachel Reeves’s Budget, have left the sport, the second most attended in the UK, in a fight for its future.

These short-sighted attacks on gambling – and by extension racing – are part of a broader crusade against pleasure. ‘Labour MPs I know are shaking their heads in disbelief,’ says a gambling industry source. ‘They used to care about the working class – now they’ve whacked another one of the things they love. You really couldn’t make it up.’

Labour will point out that racing is exempt from the tax hikes, which is true enough. But this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between gambling and racing. When one is hit, the other feels the pain – and there is plenty of that to go around. From April, remote gaming duty (RDG), paid on online casino betting, will rise from 21 per cent to 40 per cent, the joint highest in Europe. And from April 2027, a new 25 per cent rate of........

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