Former premier admits in fast-selling autobiography that his party did not understand country people

Jonathan Reed Political Editor

TONY Blair has admitted Labour did not properly understand the countryside as he revealed his regret at banning hunting and his terror when the foot and mouth crisis struck.

His memoirs reveal the Hunting Act was “one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret” and he confesses he was “ignorant” about the sport when he made the “rash undertaking” to agree to a ban.

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“If I’d proposed solving the pension problem by compulsory euthanasia for every fifth pensioner I’d have got less trouble for it,” he writes.

His comments – made in his book A Journey, which was last night declared to have become the fastest-selling autobiography – give a fresh insight into one of the most controversial acts of Mr Blair’s premiership but are likely to do little to appease critics of the ban.

While anti-hunting campaigners complain Labour took too long to introduce the ban, Mr Blair claims he became more desperate to avoid one as he learned more about the sport.

In the end, he argues, he conjured up a “masterly British compromise” as MPs finally backed a ban in 2004 despite furious protests from the hunting lobby. “It was banned in such a way that, provided certain steps are taken to avoid cruelty when the fox is killed, it isn’t banned”, he writes.

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The ban ranks alongside the Freedom of Information Act – which he fears could inhibit debate by Ministers – in terms of legislation he regrets.

Reflecting on the solution, he concludes: “It was the best I could do, but not an episode of policymaking I look back on with pride. And I should think not, I hear you say.”

He even admits telling Home Office Minister Hazel Blears to advise police not to enforce the ban vigorously, and having a wager with Prince Charles in which he pledged hunting would still be going on when he left office, although his comments will do little to appease hunt supporters who lost their battle against the ban.

“Prince Charles truly knew the farming community and felt we didn’t understand it, in which there was an element of truth,” he admits.

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Mr Blair also reveals he considers it a “total miracle” that British farming came through the foot and mouth crisis which shut down swathes of the countryside in 2001 and forced the General Election to be postponed.

Ministers were criticised in official reports for being slow to respond to the first outbreaks of disease, with the eventual mass slaughter leading to the loss of seven million animals.

As a “palpable sense of crisis” grew, Mr Blair writes of feeling “distinctly queasy and, yes, frightened by it”. The Government “didn’t have the foggiest notion” how many animals were affected and he confesses to being “overwhelmed” by the whole situation as pictures of pyres with burning carcasses filled news bulletins.

Only when he made an effort to “grip” the situation through “deep immersion” in every detail, and called in chief scientific adviser Sir David King, did the tide finally begin to turn, he says.

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“By the time it was under control in the summer, I knew everything there was to know about it: how it started; how it was spread; the methods of containment; the pros and cons of slaughter and vaccination; the different reactions of sheep and cattle; the impact on humans; the workings of farms and abattoirs; the numbers of animals normally slaughtered in a week and the number we eat in a year.

“But I also learned more about crisis management and the utter incapacity of the normal system to deal with abnormal challenges than I had ever needed to learn before.

“Though the public naturally thought we mishandled it and no one gave us any thanks for any of it, actually when I look back and reread the papers, reminding myself of the sheer horror, depth and scale of the crisis, it is a total miracle we came through it.”

A Countryside Alliance spokesman said Mr Blair’s re-writing of history would not fool anyone. “He, and he alone, was responsible for the rejection of the ‘middle way’ proposals for licensed hunting and the passing of a complete ban on all hunting.”