In Which Some Gentlemen Meet at a House

British racing has been run by committee since 1729, and it still can't agree where to hold the meeting

In 1729 a newspaper notice reported that the Jockey Club, “consisting of several Noblemen and Gentlemen”, would meet the following week at the Duke of Bolton's house in Hampshire to discuss the keeping of their horses at Newmarket. That is a very civilised way to run a sport. There was a house, there were noblemen, there was presumably lunch, and by teatime somebody had decided something.

Nobody needed a Member Nominated Director, because the members were in the drawing room and the nominating was done by looking round the table and saying “Bolton, you're hosting.”

Nearly three hundred years on, the sport has a Racecourse Association, a Racehorse Owners Association, a Thoroughbred Breeders' Association, a Jockey Club that owns fifteen racecourses, and a Large Independent Racecourse Group that, I am told, has a secretary general. It has gained a small forest of acronyms and lost the ability to agree on whose house to meet in.

All of which brings me on to Sir Philip Davies.

One Knight, Interim Terms

A new director arrives on a board that has changed its chairman more often than its mind

The BHA announced on Monday that the Racecourse Association has sent Sir Philip to its board as a Member Nominated Director, on an interim basis. That is three words of title and one of caveat, and obviously it is the caveat that matters, rather like the “temporary” car park at a provincial racecourse that has outlasted two grandstands and three chief executives.

He replaces Wilf Walsh, who gave five years and was thanked for his “significant contribution”, the traditional farewell, delivered with all the warmth of a parking ticket.

The Case for the Defence

He knows where Westminster keeps the light switches, and racing's income depends on someone who does

I am obliged to concede several points. Sir Philip sat for Shipley from 2005 to 2024, was joint chair of the all-party group on betting and gaming and vice chair of the one on racing and bloodstock, served on the Racehorse Owners Association board, and chairs the National Horseracing College at Doncaster. Before Parliament he spent twelve years at Asda in customer service and marketing, which means that, unlike a depressing proportion of Westminster, he has at some point faced a member of the public holding a faulty toaster.

He spent years telling ministers that the Gambling Commission's affordability checks were “completely unacceptable”, and since racecourses live on levy and media rights, which live on betting turnover, a man who fights for the punter's stake is no eccentric choice. Simon Cox calls him a strong advocate for racing and betting, and the record backs the description.

But an advocate is not a racecourse. The Articles ask for “appropriate practical experience in the horseracing industry”, nobody disputes his experience around the sport, and none of the published biographies I found lists a spell running a racecourse, which is my reading of the record rather than a finding.

The Form Book

Every runner has previous, and the board is entitled to read it, with the connections' explanations attached

Start with the wager. In June 2024, as Shipley approached polling day, The Sun reported that Sir Philip had bet £8,000 on losing his own seat. He did not deny it, said the stake was “nobody's business” but his, and asked what the moral dilemma was, adding that he was “busting a gut to win”. There was no suggestion of illegality, he was not among those investigated over election-date bets, and Labour's Anna Dixon took the seat by 8,603 votes. It is, I accept, a novel kind of insurance, and whether it belongs in the file of a director of the sport's regulator is a matter of taste: mine is that it raises an eyebrow rather than a stewards' inquiry.

Then comes Star Sports. Sir Philip took the chair of the bookmaker in December 2024, five months after losing his seat, and gave up his directorship on New Year's Eve, telling NEXT.io it conflicted with his new post at the Racecourse Association. That is a creditable instinct, and I record it as one. It also shows how small racing's world is, since the journey from Commons to bookmaker to racecourse board to BHA table took under two years and the only thing that moved was the name on the door.

The older entries are tamer. In 2013 he apologised to the House for failing to declare a day at Cheltenham courtesy of Ladbrokes before speaking on problem gambling, calling it an oversight, and in 2020 the Guardian reported that GVC Holdings would pay him £50,000 for advice on customer service and responsible gambling, which Keir Starmer and Carolyn Harris criticised. He called the reporting inaccurate, said he had left the select committee reviewing the Gambling Act that summer, and said he had declared his interests.

A form book is not a verdict, and none of this is a finding against him today. A nominated director is hired to arrive with interests, which makes it the one honest feature of the process, but a sport that keeps saying it wants an independent board has just filled a seat with someone whose history in racing and betting is long and well documented.

Who Exactly Does He Represent?

Ascot has gone, the Jockey Club is going, and the RCA's own review would give the seat away

Ascot gave notice in May, and the Jockey Club, which owns Cheltenham, Aintree and Epsom, followed in August, both leaving at the end of 2026 with Plumpton having slipped out of the side door in 2024. It is Noah's Ark played backwards, the animals filing off two by two while the zookeeper stands on the gangplank insisting the vessel is sound.

The Jockey Club says it is building a new organisation and fears the RCA will keep voting against an independent BHA board. The RCA says it remains committed to being a positive advocate for the sport and notes that its governance review was the first in twenty years, and both can be true at once, which in racing happens only when nobody is paying attention.

The review's recommendations, still subject to a member vote, give quarter shares to four groups and, in a detail that deserves a framed print, would have the RCA stop appointing two BHA directors at all. Read that again slowly. The RCA has sent a director to speak for racecourses, some of the biggest of which will have gone by New Year, to occupy a seat the RCA itself proposes to hand over. It is rather like sending a delegate to a summit on behalf of a country that is being partitioned, and “interim” is easily the most honest word in the press release.

Twelve Months on the Same Treadmill

The faces change, the furniture does not

A year ago Lord Allen had just taken the chair on the promise of an independent board and a commercial remit. By March he was gone after six months, because the BHA's member organisations could not agree the rule changes and a change needs unanimity, in a sport whose members agree on nothing except that the handicapper is wrong. David Jones filled the seat for a second time, Brant Dunshea was confirmed as chief executive, and in July Simon Cox was named chair, starting on 1 October.

That makes four spells in the chair, shared among three men, since January 2025. To chair the BHA you must be a diplomat, a strategist, a referee, a lobbyist, a fundraiser and, on the evidence, a patient man, and the Racing Post billed the job as “a ten-day-a-week job”, which is ambitious given that the calendar stops at seven and the members struggle to agree on one.

Is the board more fit for purpose than twelve months ago? On the evidence I can find, the chair is new, the chief executive is permanent, the racecourse side has fractured, and the unanimity rule that sank Lord Allen has not, as far as I can see, been repealed. That is my opinion, and the facts it rests on are in this section: a fresh jockey on a loose girth has not improved the horse.

What I Would Do

It is not complicated, and I have only had one cup of tea

The appointment solves a vacancy and puts a politically fluent voice on the board, which has real value. It cannot solve the question that drove Lord Allen from the door, which is who speaks for British racecourses, and so, for the avoidance of doubt, here is what I would do.

Simon Cox should put the four member organisations in a room with a flask and no Wi-Fi and let them out when they have agreed a date for the next meeting. The members should replace the unanimity rule with a two-thirds majority and tell the old rule to take a running jump. The RCA should decide whether it is a trade body that does excellent work on racecourse services or a parliament, because it cannot be both at once and the Jockey Club has noticed.

Ascot and the Jockey Club, for their part, should explain who will speak for racecourses once they have left the body that speaks for racecourses, and Sir Philip should be given the fair run I think he deserves.

I know Sir Philip may find this unkind. It is aimed at the seat rather than the sitter, and the door is open for a reply, because by the accounts I have read he is a capable operator and a genuine fan of the game.

A seat has been found. The horse, as ever, remains under review.