Boris’s animal rights laws could come back to bite him

Boris Johnson wants to beef up animal rights. The new rules will include a ban on importing stuffed heads as hunting trophies, and possibly on fur as well; a mandatory microchip for every cat in the kingdom; no more exports of live animals for slaughter; a ban on keeping primates as pets; and, most bizarre of all, a law requiring government to accept that animals are sentient and feel pain and angst like the rest of us.

This looks odd. There was no extensive pressure except from a small fringe for any of these measures. To most traditional conservatives, animal rights conjure up unattractive visions of young men in dirty anoraks smashing laboratory windows to rescue supposed vivisection victims.

In fact, however, one suspects Boris — whether or not at Carrie Symonds’s prompting — acted absolutely rationally in adding these proposals to the Queen’s Speech this week.

Why? The answer is that the 2019 election and last week’s flurry of voting were good news for the Tories because the demographics came right.