Bloodsports are a peculiarly emotive issue snapping at the ankles of David Cameron – a traditional Tory pretending to be a very modern Conservative. The Bullingdon Boy’s desperate these days to keep buttoned his opposition to the Hunting Act he dismissed in the past as “bonkers” and a “farce”.
Delighted to be photographed cuddling a lamb he helped to deliver on a farm in his Oxfordshire constituency, posing as the godfather of a woolly infant animal judged a vote-winner by spin-vets, Cameron is equally keen to avoiding being snapped in his hunting gear.
Shouting “Tally ho” in pursuit of Reynard would be a big vote-loser, with polling for the League Against Cruel Sports showing that about three-quarters of the country find the practice of setting hounds to rip apart foxes and deer thoroughly objectionable.
So, over the next eight months, Cameron’s as likely to be seen in his jodhpurs as he is in the turned-up wing collar and tailcoat of his student Hooray Henry days beneath Oxford’s dreaming spires.
A chap who has ridden half-a-dozen times with the Heythrop Hunt prefers us to consider him as a green cyclist, or occasionally a runner competing in charity events or jogging to keep his weight down, rather than a bloodthirsty huntsman snarling behind his choreographed smiles.
Cameron’s reluctance to champion hunting publicly is politically astute, if fundamentally dishonest, and he must have breathed a sigh of relief earlier this year when a friend escaped fox-hunting charges.
The Crown Prosecution Service dropped charges against Julian Barnfield, a professional huntsman with the Heythrop, following a High Court ruling that “searching” for a mammal wasn’t hunting. For hunting to be proved, it needed to be an “intentional” act.
Cameron’s discipline isn’t matched by Shadow Cabinet colleagues unable to suppress their eagerness to repeal the Hunting Act which is simultaneously dismissed as ineffective, the Cons claiming there’s more hunting than ever. It’s up by 11 per cent since the ban, according to the Countryside Alliance – effectively a Tory front organisation with a few Labour patsies performing the role of Lenin’s useful idiots.
Hunting is a red meat question for the bulk of Tory MPs and candidates – an issue that gets them out of bed and on a high horse. Many Conservative activists hunt or have ties with hunters.
First out of the traps was frontbencher Edward Garnier, chair of the Countryside Alliance’s repeal committee. In April, he promised the re-legalising of hunting with hounds would be a priority for a future Conservative government. With the economy in recession and dole queues lengthening, Cameron jumped on Garnier, who was left in no doubt it’s unwise to let the cat (or perhaps that should be the fox) out of the bag.
The line from Tory headquarters was that Garnier is just a fringe figure in Cameron’s Conservatives, despite his post as Shadow Minister for Justice. The same cannot be said of Tory big gun William Hague, Cameron’s deputy in all but name.
The baldie Tyke, insisted Countryside Alliance chief executive Simon Hart, gave 400 hunters in the Masters of Foxhounds Association “everything they wanted to hear and more” at a recent private session.
“More than that, he gave everyone in the room absolute confidence that the commitment would be speedily delivered”, added Hart, Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire.
Ignore failing banks, forget collapsing companies and shun public services – it’s
fox-hunting that’s getting William Hague excited.
When we get to the general election, I don’t believe fox-hunting will deserve to get off the undercard. Jobs, housing, incomes, employment security, pensions, poverty, health, education, crime, Trident (scrapping of) the environment, clean energy, electoral reform, Europe and Afghanistan are among the issues I consider more important.
Yet I share the instinctive distaste of the majority over hunting with hounds, sickened by the thought some people take enjoyment from a pack of wild dogs sinking their fangs into a terrified animal.
And I’ll admit to a chippy pleasure at the howls of protest from the red-coated brigade shouting it’s their inalienable, historic right to hunt foxes. Doubtless, the bear and badge baiters and the cock and dog fighters of yore trotted out the same tired arguments used by the Conservatives-cum-Countryside Alliance.
But it’s the muffled obsession of Oscar Wilde’s unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable that’s the telling political point, revealing Cameron as a traditional Conservative dressing as a moderniser. The Tory leader wouldn’t lead Britain into the future. He’d turn the clock back.
Meanwhile, a pop star, a television actor and a team of sportsmen are among upwards of 600 victims of an £80-million, Bernard Madoff-style sting in Britain. Ferrari-driving fraudsters smooth-talked investors into parting with their cash by promising fat profits of up to 13 per cent a month.
The victims, who unfortunately include some families who were merely well-off rather than wealthy, should have remembered the old advice: if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
I was uneasy about the Chancellor of the Exchequer guaranteeing the deposits of investors who stuck their cash in Iceland’s banks to reap big foreign dividends instead of popping down to the local building society. If this “Ponzi fraud” lot come knocking, Alistair Darling must tell them they went for the huge gain, so they’ve got to take the pain.
