The Man Who Would Be Chair: Lord Allen Delays as BHA Spins Like a Lame Two-Year-Old in a Thunderstorm

British horse racing: the only sport where the organisational chaos off the track regularly outruns the actual thoroughbreds on it. The British Horseracing Authority (BHA), never one to gallop before it's hobbled, has outdone itself this week with an absolute steeplechase of a farce. Their anointed new chair, Lord Charles Allen, has suddenly decided, days before mounting the saddle, that perhaps he ought to “listen” to a few more people before officially turning up to the job.

This, we’re told, is not a backpedal. No no. It’s a “listening tour”. Because when a man of Allen’s calibre — knighted, gilded, chaired and advisory-boarded into oblivion — delays taking a role he was announced for seven months ago, it’s not panic. It’s consultation. It's vision-building. It's stakeholder empathy. And definitely not a man clocking the state of racing's governance and thinking: Christ, what fresh hell is this?

In fact, let’s be honest: perhaps Lord Allen took one look at his incoming boardroom cohort — a charming medley of vested interests, regional turf barons, and industry lifers who believe the term “strategy” just means a longer lunch — and muttered to himself: “Oh f**, I can’t chair this lot.”*
Now, instead of leaping aboard the sinking barge, he wants structural change before the journey even begins.
Which tells you everything you need to know. It’s a worse gig than working for Jim Ratcliffe at Manchester United — at least there, when someone hoofs it upfield blindly, it's called tactics.

The Leadership Vacuum: Now With Added Air

What makes this particularly delicious is that the BHA is also, quite incredibly, without a permanent chief executive. That’s right. Britain's multi-billion-pound racing industry, grappling with gambling reforms, economic downturn, and an existential crisis about who even watches this sport anymore besides retired colonels and lads on stag dos, currently has no one in charge. It’s less an organisation and more a haunted pub.

Julie Harrington, who vacated the CEO role in December 2024, presumably had the good sense to get out before she had to spend another AGM pretending that ‘digital engagement strategy’ meant anything more than tweeting a photo of a horse with a mildly suggestive pun.

Since then, Brant Dunshea — a man with the aura of someone permanently filling in during someone else’s dentist appointment — has been serving as acting CEO. And now, the man who was supposed to help hire the next full-time boss has… postponed his own start date.

You couldn’t make it up, except of course, they already have, and it’s called “British governance.”

Labour Peer, Stakeholder Whisperer, and a Man Who’s Had Enough AGMs to Last a Lifetime

Let’s not forget who Lord Allen actually is. He’s not just any non-arriving chair. He’s Baron Allen of Kensington, Labour life peer, former CEO of ITV, chairman of Balfour Bloody Beatty, and one-time sherpa to Ed Miliband's tragic Everest of political dreams.

This is a man so well-networked he probably gets annual Christmas cards from both Rupert Murdoch and Mo Farah. He was involved in London's successful Olympic bid, chaired the Invictus Games, and once advised the Home Office, which as credentials go is like saying you once piloted a ship through a thunderstorm full of drunk bureaucrats — and it was your idea to go sailing.

So when he sees the BHA's governance structure and quietly tiptoes backwards out the door muttering something about “additional conversations,” we should listen. That’s not dithering — that’s diplomatic code for “this house is on fire and the extinguisher is full of custard.”

The BHA: Still Trying to Reinvent the Wheel, But This Time It’s a Carousel

Let’s briefly recap what’s got Lord Allen so spooked. The BHA was meant to be empowered by a governance reshuffle in 2022 — the sort of management PowerPoint messiah complex that sees a structural review as the answer to a failing sport, rather than, say, making the prize money slightly less insulting than a Wetherspoons gift card.

Instead of decisiveness, we got a reshuffle of the same old acronyms: RCA, ROA, TBA, and Licensed Personnel. It reads less like a racing authority and more like a Home Office sting operation.

Governance reform in racing is always sold as a way to make “hard decisions quicker,” when in reality it’s a way to confuse accountability so thoroughly that no one can ever be blamed. It’s like musical chairs, but every chair is actually a committee.

The Real Stakes: Gambling, Funding, and Why the Sport Might Be Doomed by Tuesday

All of this leadership faff comes at a critical moment for the sport. The government, in its infinite wisdom, is poised to harmonise gambling tax rates — which in political terms means “we’re broke and this is an easy PR win.” That could wallop racing’s income like a loose stirrup to the face.

Fewer offers, worse odds, plummeting sponsorships — the whole economic ecology of horse racing is at risk, and the people who should be fighting that fire are currently busy emailing stakeholders about feelings.

Lord Allen, one suspects, was sold a different job: one with influence, leadership, maybe the odd appearance at Royal Ascot in a borrowed top hat. What he seems to have found instead is a money-hemorrhaging civil war between owners, breeders, and racecourses, all demanding "decisive action" so long as it doesn't affect them.

Conclusion: The Horse May Bolt, But the Chair Never Even Arrived

Ultimately, Lord Allen’s hesitancy is less of a shock and more of a punchline to an already well-worn joke. The British Horseracing Authority is behaving like one of its own runners: stuck in the stalls, eyes darting nervously, with a sense that even the whip won’t help now.

British racing needs vision, leadership, and a functioning executive chain of command. What it currently has is a delayed peer, a temporary CEO, and a board that sounds like the cast list for a very dull Agatha Christie adaptation.

So here we are. Another leadership vacuum. Another opportunity not taken. Another week in British sport where the only thing running reliably is the farce.

At this rate, we should just hand the reins to the actual horses. At least they tend to run in the right direction.