WITH the Government battling to resolve the firefighters' strike, trying to contain further public-sector militancy, struggling to produce tangible improvements in health and education and to maintain public confidence in law-and-order, not to mention preparing for an imminent war against Iraq, it is somewhat surprising that valuable parliamentary time is once again to be taken up by a Bill on hunting with dogs.
Surprising, that is, to anyone who has yet to grasp Tony Blair's thinking on this particular issue. For the Prime Minister regards hunting not as a matter of high principle, but as an opportunity for low politics.
Mr Blair knows that he only has t
o toss a hunting Bill into the Chamber and his backbenchers will pursue it, slavering, until it reaches its conclusion – which, in the past, has been failure through a lack of parliamentary time. Should such a denouement be reached this time, the Prime Minister will not be displeased. For this is an issue which Mr Blair likes to keep alive so that he can bring it out of the closet whenever the occasion demands, an all-purpose tonic guaranteed to provide some red meat for his pack of rebellious Old Labour hounds and to put the Tories on the back foot.
Were this anything other than an exercise in cynicism, were the Prime Minister truly concerned with animal welfare, he would ignore the opinions of Labour voters and mount a campaign against angling, he would antagonise the food industry by taking a stand against battery farming and he would brave the wrath of the multiculturalist lobby by pointing out that the suffering caused by halal and kosher slaughter practices is greater than that inflicted on the fox by the huntsman.
Should the Bill go through in its present form, of course, it will not ban hunting so much as strangle it with bureaucracy, for it cleverly steers a Third Way between the sport's foes and fans. In this way, Mr Blair can avoid the charge that he is personally hostile to country pursuits while at the same time satisfying his backbenchers. He can also sow seeds of doubt and dissent among the pro-hunting lobby, an influential minority of whom would accept the idea of regulation, in defiance of the majority who believe that it is no business of government to tell people how to spend their leisure time. Yet there is every likelihood that it will be amended by Commons anti-hunters – fundamentalists who refuse to countenance the notion of a compromise – changed again by the Lords and run out of time once more.
However, while this Bill might be an amusing and useful distraction for Mr Blair, it is far more than that to country folk. For rural Britain, it demonstrates yet again Labour's instinctive hostility towards a community still reeling from the collapse of its economy and suffering the fraying of the very fabric of country life.
