Hannah Spencer Is Right to Call Out Labour

Scotland and Wales have both now agreed to ban greyhound racing. England has not.

Every day England delays, it protects an industry built on turning dogs into gambling equipment and pretending that what happens to them is culture.

Labour’s defence of that industry is becoming harder to justify and uglier to listen to. When culture secretary Lisa Nandy said the gambling industry “brings joy to a lot of people” and that the industry as a whole brings “positive benefits to the United Kingdom”, she was not speaking for the dogs whose bodies are used up for entertainment. She was speaking for an economy that treats broken animals as acceptable collateral.

And when Labour insiders reportedly suggest that England cannot follow Scotland and Wales because greyhound racing is tied to working-class culture in so-called red wall areas, the insult deepens. The rebuttal has come from Green MP Hannah Spencer, who accused Labour of “offensively caricaturing” working-class people. She said Nandy “continuously offends people by saying that working-class people don’t care about dogs or each other”, adding that the idea is “a caricature” and “very offensive”.

She is right.

This line from Labour is not solidarity with working-class communities. It is class prejudice dressed up as political realism. It assumes ordinary people are so morally stunted, so emotionally shallow, that they need the exploitation of dogs preserved on their behalf. It suggests that concern for animals is somehow middle-class, while gambling firms extracting money from struggling communities is authentic working-class culture. That is contempt, not respect.

And it is especially grotesque because the facts are not hidden.

Between 2018 and 2023, 2,700 greyhounds died and more than 26,500 injuries were recorded. Animal Aid says more than 4,000 dogs were killed or euthanised in the greyhound racing industry between 2017 and 2024. The League Against Cruel Sports says 3,809 dogs were injured in 2024 alone, with at least 123 dying by the track. In Scotland, 13 dogs tested positive for cocaine in a single year. This is what Labour is refusing to confront.

Greyhounds are bred for speed, pushed around tracks at up to 40mph, and discarded when they stop making money. Broken legs, spinal injuries, head trauma, paralysis, drugging, abandonment, death. The defenders of this trade want the public to believe these outcomes are signs of poor oversight. They are not. They are what happens when living beings are turned into units of profit.

Once a dog’s body becomes an asset, the dog ceases to matter except as long as she can perform.

That is why the usual talk of welfare is so hollow. The problem is not that the machinery occasionally malfunctions. The problem is that dogs are being fed into the machinery at all. Profit demands speed. Speed creates impact. Impact creates injuries. Injuries create deaths. The cruelty is not sitting at the edges of greyhound racing. It is built into its purpose.

Scotland and Wales have started to admit that. England is still making excuses.

Those excuses look even thinner when you consider who benefits from the delay. Spencer pointed to Labour’s closeness to the gambling industry, saying Labour MPs “will frequently accept really expensive hospitality packages from gambling companies”. It is difficult to take moral handwringing about jobs and culture seriously when the industry in question is so heavily entangled with lobbying power and political access.

Predictably, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain falls back on the usual language of heritage and economics. It says greyhound racing is “enshrined in British culture”, contributes £164 million a year to the economy, and employs 5,400 people. But none of that answers the moral question.

British culture once enshrined all sorts of things. That is not a defence. Economic contribution is not a defence either. Almost every entrenched injustice has people making money from it. That is usually the reason it survives so long.

The real shift here is not governmental courage. It is public tolerance collapsing. Scotland’s last track has already closed. Wales has only one remaining track. The industry is shrinking because fewer people are willing to keep pretending that running dogs to injury and death for betting slips is harmless fun.

England now stands exposed.

The question is no longer whether greyhound racing can be cleaned up, regulated better, or made kinder. It cannot. Hannah Spencer is right to call out Labour’s class caricatures, because that rhetoric is doing a second job alongside defending the industry. It is trying to shame people out of their conscience.

It will not work forever.

Greyhounds are not betting infrastructure. They are not here to generate revenue until their bodies fail.

Scotland and Wales have started acting like that is true.

England should stop hiding behind gamblers, lobbyists, and patronising nonsense about the working class, and ban greyhound racing too.