This past week brought some pretty heavy spring showers insofar as the UK gambling industry was concerned. The month started off well enough with the dropping of a ban on casino advertising, but bad news followed in two waves.

First, the House of Lords gave a "thumbs down" on plans for a Las-Vegas style super-casino in Manchester and secondly, in his last budget with the current Labour government, Chancellor Gordon Brown brought a 15 percent tax on remote gambling and taxes on casinos as high as 50 percent. As The Daily Mail put it, "Britain's regulatory rules for Internet gambling . . . are now meaningless, with no operators to regulate."

How could this happen? For years the UK has been the bright light in the tunnel: The Gambling Act 2005 was the culmination of years of pro-legalization and regulation efforts and was believed to chart the way forward to an open, safe and regulated industry. The UK would become a world leader in the gambling business almost overnight and now, nothing?

Hardly! As per usual there's a reason for everything that a politician does and Chancellor Brown has some very good reasons for what he's just done. In the first place, he is expected to inherit the Labour party from Tony Blair in the near future and it’s common knowledge what a new manager needs to do when he takes over from the old manager: he steps up to the podium and takes bold action so that everyone knows that he's a steel-jawed fellow with big muscles and a twinkle in his flinty eyes.

In this particular case, Mr. Brown has effectively taken control of the UK gambling agenda because in one stroke it suddenly doesn't matter what the Blair government and pro-regulation Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell have accomplished in the past; all that matters now is what Mr. Brown will do next, assuming of course that he forms the next government. And for the record it is widely believed that that new government will not include Ms. Jowell, so why not cut her off at the knees before he pushes her out the door? She's very likely to be a casualty of the administration change anyway.

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