‘Something Rather Perverse’

Abstract

Focused on debates preceding the passing of the Gambling Act 2005, Chapter 4 traces a final set of changes in how gambling was understood to relate to national visions of risk, profit-making, insurance, and welfare in the UK. Under New Labour, commercial gambling was repositioned as a potential regeneration tool, with the state’s role in part to ensure its success in the domestic and global marketplace. This led to a further narrowing of lawmakers’ visions about gambling. The chapter focuses specifically on New Labour’s casino expansion and online gambling liberalization plans, identifying a reorientation of elite gambling debates to focus on globally salient, technologically cutting-edge spectacles, designed to draw outsiders. Everyday forms of play—especially in multi-use environments—became newly problematic for the state, and in some cases they were to be subjected to increased surveillance. The chapter hereby challenges claims that the 2005 Act represented a neo-liberal effort to encourage risk-taking.