Understanding Government Incompetence

It is a truth universally acknowledged that in British politics, the less one knows about a subject, the more likely one is to be put in charge of it. Thus, Baroness Twycross—whose previous expertise lay in governance at Diabetes UK—finds herself shepherding Britain’s horse racing and gambling industries. Presumably, she was as surprised as anyone when the job offer landed in her lap, having spent far more time contemplating blood sugar levels than bloodstock sales.

But such is the grand tradition of the modern ministerial appointment: knowledge and experience are optional, but party loyalty and a willingness to parrot pre-written soundbites are absolute requirements. If we lived in a society that valued competence, appointments might be based on actual expertise—racing professionals overseeing racing, defence veterans heading the Ministry of Defence, and perhaps, in a truly radical move, a Chancellor of the Exchequer who has spent at least five minutes in a non-fictional economy. Instead, we get a merry-go-round of ministers lurching from one department to another, forever arriving with wide-eyed ignorance and departing before the consequences of their decisions have time to register.

Britain’s Racehorses Are Packing Their Bags

One of the most glaringly obvious problems facing British racing is the steady exodus of its best talent. If Baroness Twycross is indeed keen on statistics—though her understanding of them seems to be on par with a GCSE student’s last-minute exam revision—then she might care to glance at the figures that truly matter.

In 2019, there were 181 three-year-old Flat horses rated 100-plus competing in Britain, and 118 of them stayed on to race here as four-year-olds. Fast forward to 2023, and the decline is stark: only 136 horses hit that rating, and of those, just 84 remained in Britain.

Why? Because British prize money is a joke. Owners, faced with the option of sending their horses to compete for a pittance at Lingfield or a fortune in France, Ireland, or the Middle East, are making the only rational decision. British racing is fast becoming a showroom, where promising young horses are developed before being flogged to the highest bidder abroad.

Even at the grassroots level, the rot is setting in. The number of horses registered to run in point-to-points—the very breeding ground of future National Hunt stars—has dropped from 1,070 to 939 in just a year. Fewer horses mean fewer meetings, fewer trainers, fewer jobs, and a slow, painful contraction of a sport that once formed a vital part of the rural economy.

A Minister Praising a Policy No One Supports

Despite this, Twycross had the audacity to declare herself "really encouraged" by the introduction of Premier Racedays, a policy so universally loathed that it is only slightly less controversial than a hosepipe ban at Glastonbury. The initiative was intended to boost the sport’s prestige by creating 170 ‘shop window’ race days, designed to attract new fans and showcase "top-quality" events.

The reality? Chaos.

Smaller racecourses have been left fuming as their midweek fixtures are stripped of quality, with prize money and better horses siphoned off to bigger meetings. The net result is a two-tier system, where high-profile events flourish while the bread-and-butter races that keep the sport alive are left to wither. If Twycross had even the faintest grasp of what she was talking about, she wouldn’t have been caught dead praising it. But alas, her speech was likely cobbled together by a civil servant who, when asked to summarise British racing, probably resorted to reading a Wikipedia page.

How to Kill an Industry in Three Easy Steps

While Twycross’ racing illiteracy is worrying, her approach to gambling regulation is outright dangerous. She gleefully noted that gross gambling yield had risen by 4.6%, a statistic she deployed with the air of someone who thinks it constitutes a good news story. What she neglected to mention was the £9 million hole left in racing’s finances thanks to the Gambling Commission’s blundering introduction of affordability checks—a policy so catastrophically misguided that it makes HS2 look like a well-run infrastructure project.

These checks, aimed at curbing problem gambling, require punters to hand over their personal bank statements just to place a bet. In practice, they have achieved precisely nothing except pushing legitimate bettors into the hands of unregulated black-market bookies, where there are no checks, no protections, and no levy contributions to British racing.

Meanwhile, Twycross’ Labour colleagues—such as Dr Beccy Cooper and Anna Dixon—are peddling the laughably simplistic idea that "gambling is an addiction and a public health issue". This is the kind of thinking that assumes everyone who enjoys a pint is an alcoholic and anyone who eats a slice of cake is on the fast track to diabetes. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of gambling, human behaviour, and the very industry Twycross is meant to be regulating.

Why Do Governments Keep Appointing People With No Experience?

One might wonder why someone with zero background in racing or gambling was given this role in the first place. The answer, depressingly, is because that’s how government works now.

British politics has abandoned the concept of expertise in favour of loyalty, optics, and a willingness to say whatever is necessary to survive the next reshuffle. Ministers aren’t appointed because they understand a sector; they’re appointed because they’re inoffensive, politically reliable, or simply available when the music stops.

Consider some recent examples:

• Gillian Keegan (Education Secretary) was a businesswoman before being plonked into education, where she now blames teachers for RAAC concrete collapses.

• Grant Shapps, a man whose most extensive military experience likely involves playing Call of Duty, was somehow made Defence Secretary.

• Therese Coffey—who once suggested people struggling to afford food should simply work harder—was, bafflingly, appointed Secretary for Work and Pensions before being shuffled to the Environment brief, where she ignored sewage concerns with impressive consistency.

• Nadine Dorries, who, despite being unable to grasp how Channel 4 was funded, was once tasked with overseeing British media.

And for balance, let’s not pretend Labour is immune:

• David Lammy, now Foreign Secretary, once thought the Arctic and the Antarctic were the same place, and confused Stockholm with Switzerland. Presumably, geography was optional at Harvard.

• Angela Rayner, Deputy Prime Minister, struggled to define what a “woman” was during a particularly painful interview, despite Labour’s ongoing struggle to win back voters on gender debates.

• Dawn Butler, who in 2019 confidently declared that 90% of giraffes are gay, proving that Labour’s grasp of both zoology and statistics is somewhat… creative.

Such is the way of modern governance: expertise is out, blind confidence is in, and if all else fails, just attend a lot of meetings. Baroness Twycross, like her peers, will shuffle between roles, leaving little impact beyond a trail of hollow soundbites and vaguely optimistic press releases. Meanwhile, British racing will continue its slow decline—not with a bang, but with a patronising, ministerial smile.