Keith Bradley was pilloried by the right-wing press when he said hunting was a class issue. But what he really said – but was wifully misrepresented – was dead right. It is the hunters, not the antis, who made it a class issue and hunting would never have survived unlegislated against so long but for the power and influence of the landowners and their friends who are at its heart.
Cameron and his Old Etonian pals are their archetype, the unacceptable face of privilege who disguise their true nature and intentions with modern PR speak and honeyed declarations of caring and compassion.
In their guts, most of the public know this, know they will promote their own narrow class interests before all else, but they will allow themselves to be seduced if Labour does not devote all its energy to exposing them.
Their fervent support for hunting is their Achilles heel, it shows everyone what they really are.
Crass ‘class warfare’ attacks such as those in the Crewe by-election are obviously counter-productive, but the hunting issue provides the perfect scenario for a more sophisticated and much more wounding attack on the ‘Bullingdon bullies’and their followers.
Labour needs to make this issue as prominent as possible and to pledge to strengthen the Hunting Act [it really needs it] not just to resist repeal, and to clamp down on those now openly flouting a long-awaited and massively supported piece of animal welfare legislation.

As for the usual anti fox propganda about them taking lambs,tudies have shown that most lambs eaten are still-born or sickly, and that losses to foxes are very much lower than losses to other causes such as bad weather.

People chasing down animals with packs of dogs for fun is not what the British people want to see re-legalised. This is the 21st Century not the 18th.