Racing need not fear Green party ‘conversation’ but must continue efforts on horse welfare

The Green party surged to record results at local and national level in last week’s elections, prompting Zack Polanski, the party’s leader, to suggest that two-party politics is “dead and buried”. Ladbrokes, meanwhile, subsequently cut the odds about the Green party winning the most seats at the next general election to 12-1, while an overall majority for the Greens is priced at 28-1.

Not likely, in other words but, at the same time, far from impossible. In the case of a majority for Polanski’s party, it is roughly the same price as Moon Chime, the winner of the big handicap hurdle at Haydock last Saturday. However the party fares in terms of seat numbers, the Green voice in the next parliament, in three years’ time or possibly fewer, seems sure to be significantly louder than ever before.

Since recent, or relatively recent, public comment regarding horse racing from significant figures in the party implies a strong abolitionist streak, these are interesting times for the country’s second-biggest spectator sport.

As the Sun reported – on its front page, no less – a couple of weeks ago, Polanski himself proposed the removal of “all animals involved in sport” on X in 2024.

Hannah Spencer, meanwhile, the recently elected MP for Gorton and Denton, said last month that there needs to be “a conversation: about racing, a few days after two horses sustained fatal injuries at the Grand National meeting.

“A conversation needs to be had about horse racing,” Spencer said. “We all saw those awful pictures of a horse that had been raced to death to make money for gambling companies. That conversation is coming. Those conversations are shifting. People are telling me they don’t think horse racing is acceptable either.”

The obvious question that prompts itself here is who and what, exactly, will this conversation involve? Will it just be Green party members and animal rights campaigners? Or will the 80,000 people whose jobs depend on the sport get a say too? And how about the fans who buy nearly 5m tickets to the races each year?

Spencer’s comment is infused with the language of animal rights based activism. It holds that the use of animals by humans for any purpose at all is wrong and by extension that it is not possible to cherish and respect racehorses and also ask them to race, which is what they were bred and born to do.

The phrase “raced to death” is particularly telling. No one is trying to kill or injure racehorses, but there is a – very small – risk inherent in asking them to compete, which the sport is constantly and consciously seeking to minimise.