The science behind Olivia Colman’s left-wing face

The new hunting year formally began last week. Should I resubscribe? Politically, the outlook is bleak. In February, Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, announced that Labour would implement a ‘full ban on trail and drag hunting’, on the grounds that there were ‘loopholes’ in Labour’s hunting ban. This even though, when advocating the original ban, Labour said it favoured drag hunting (trail hunting had not then been invented) and was worried only about live quarry. Mr Reed included his ban promise in a speech in which he announced that his party would treat rural voters with ‘greater respect’. His two aims conflict. The idea that chasing a scented rag – an activity which no one could regard as cruel – should be banned because some might exploit it to chase a living creature is like banning cars because of speeding. It is illiberal. Far from showing greater respect to rural voters, it insults them. One consequence would be that packs of hounds will no longer have any permitted activity. Their bloodlines, their skills, the hounds themselves, all will die. Looked at politically, the thing makes no sense, except – to use an unsuitably un-vegan metaphor – as red meat to throw to the animal-rights monomaniacs of the Corbynite hard left. Tony Blair made a similar gesture with the 2004 ban. He came publicly to regret the resulting ill feeling, waste of parliamentary time and bad law. Sir Keir Starmer is right to think that rural votes are there for the asking. Traditional rural loyalty to the Tories has frayed, notably over crass regulation, planning, attacks on farming and monstrous energy costs. He may think trail hunting is a ‘many not the few’ issue, but in reality he would do much better to let sleeping hounds lie. The statesmanlike answer would be to announce a Law Commission review of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, involving all rural interests.