Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe this week said the sale, first pledged by Labour in 2001 to end the Government’s direct involvement in horseracing, would be postponed for the medium term because market conditions were “not appropriate”. He said the Tote would be retained in public ownership until the economic climate improved, which, bearing in mind current forecasts, may take some time.

The Tote was set up by an Act of Parliament in 1928, is presently the fourth largest bookmaker in the UK, and has the distinction of being one of just 29 businesses owned by the Government.

But while the group posted profits of more than £163m in July, and has contributed greatly to the survival of British horseracing, its betting shops are known to be underperforming rivals, hence the desire to let the free market take the strain.

As recently as July Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe stressed that no final decision had been made on whether a sale should go ahead, but the economic maelstrom unleashed since then appears finally to have put paid to any chance of a sale.

To be fair, the process did come tantalizingly close on a few occasions. A £400m bid from a racing consortium last year was followed up with another bid of £320m, which was then rejected for being too low. An earlier attempt to offload the Tote was blocked in 2006 by the European Commission, as the price was deemed too low and tantamount to state aid.

In the past year, if anything, the Government accelerated efforts to punt their betting business. Investment bank Goldman Sachs was hired by the government to value the Tote.  

Interestingly an enquiry to read the Goldman Sachs report on the tote, made under the Freedom of Information Act by GamblingCompliance, was refused last month.

Tony Dyer a Spokesman for the Department of Culture Media and Sport told us:  "The release of this information would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of the Department of Culture Media and Sport by revealing market-sensitive information. In addition, the release of information could prejudice the commercial interests of the Tote in a competitive environment."

More likely though, the DCMS does not want anyone to see the conclusions of the report which is believed to have valued the business at only £260-290m - and that was in the months before the worst of the credit crunch.

Last week’s admission of failure also came nearly four months after British betting industry veteran and former Rank Group CEO Mike Smith was hired specifically to expedite the sale of the Tote.

But Smith is the man who has successfully flogged the unwanted video duplication arm of Rank, and is considered a trade sale maestro, so his conclusion that the sale would not work must be considered final.

Adding to the sensitivity surrounding the tote sale is the fact that the Wigan-based business is a political vote destroyer for a number of Labour politicians.  

It has frequently been noted that a disproportionate number of cabinet politicians represent constituencies that border its base in Wigan and the last thing any of them wants to see is the spectre of mass lay-offs as a private bookmaker moves in to strip out the underperforming elements of the business.

As shadow gambling minister Tobias Ellwood concluded, the worst part about the whole process has been its unhappy ending. “What’s most disappointing is that we’ve heard nothing about the Government’s future plans,” he said. “ When will they look again at a sale and how long will they let the Tote grow its business? Uncertainty is the last thing racing needs.”

A very different story looks to be unfolding in France though, where the Sarkozy government, under a different kind of EU pressure, has been discussing its options to regulate and open its gambling sector. But one thing very much off the agenda is any move to affect the established position of the PMU - France’s tote, an organization that pays for the upkeep of France’s beloved horseracing industry.

At a recent conference in Paris ,the PMU’s president Bertrand Belinguier reiterated that any liberalization of the French betting market should pointedly not include fixed-odds betting.

The PMU boss also insisted that other operators might be allowed to set up alongside the monopoly operator and offer the same products to the public, but they would have to do so on the same basis as the tote, with correspondingly poor returns to gamblers of around 80 percent.

In France, as in the UK now, the tote betting system is safe within the shelter of Government control, very far from the wilder excesses of free market storms.