Issue: 20 November 2004	PAGE 1 of 4 next >>

In the scheme of things, it may not greatly matter whether fox-hunting survives in England. We live in a world of woe and suffering, of pestilence, poverty and war, where millions die each year from hunger or violence, where a vast crisis in western Asia threatens to erupt catastrophically. A sense of proportion should tell us that the future of a traditional country sport enjoyed by barely a quarter of a million people in a damp little island off the north-western corner of Europe cannot be of the highest importance.

And yet the hunting controversy is also like a great sheet of lightning which has lit up the whole political landscape in all its horrible detail. This week’s climax is much more than just a showdown between Lords and Commons; it is one of the bleakest moments in recent political history. We should almost be thankful for the politicians who have forced the Bill through, since they have demonstrated in the process the sheer rottenness of our political culture.

By now the question has obviously taken on a life of its own and is in a real sense beyond argument, having exhausted both sides in debate. All the same, it needs to be said one last time that there is no moral difference whatever between fox-hunting and fishing, and that only an ethical imbecile can pretend otherwise. That is written with more than usual conviction, and even authority. I have never hunted in my life, and I enjoy fishing. My view is shared on the other side by Peter Singer, leader of the advanced animal rights movement, who doesn’t believe that there is any distinction either.

To be sure, there are some who do claim to discern a difference. One of the nastiest moments in recent political history was before the 1997 election when Millbank, worried about the wider effect of a hunting ban on country sportsmen, published a document saying that New Labour was actively in favour of angling. Tony Banks, the Labour MP, and Billy Bragg, the folk-singer, both admit that they like fishing, and both want to ban hunting. I would put it to those who find hunting distasteful that there must be some minimal honesty in this matter. Anyone who can say what Banks and Bragg say is in the ethical position of a paedophile who wants to criminalise adult homosexuality. It’s as despicable as that.

But the comparison with fishing also shows that fox-hunters aren’t quite right when they claim that the Bill is motivated simply by class hatred. There is some truth in that, although I would say the motives are a larger Trotzreaktion, a sour frustration and resentment which happen to be focused on a small group of people enjoying an estoric sport but which really extend far beyond. The real truth is quite plain. Although there is indeed a huge difference between hunting and fishing, it isn’t ethical or social; it is statistical — and in the end financial.

Hunting is a question on which MPs can parade their consciences, but with absolutely no political risk. Barely 250,000 people hunt, four million people fish. If the figures were the other way round, the politics would be too: if a quarter of a million people fished, MPs would be clamouring to ban angling, and if four million people hunted, then we would have been told that New Labour was the fox-hunter’s friend. There is no parliamentary seat in the country, not even in Leicestershire or Gloucestershire, where a ‘hunting vote’ is decisive, but there must be between 5,000 and 10,000 anglers in every parliamentary constituency, so that any MPs who had the honesty and courage to say that they wanted to ban fishing as well as hunting would be in real danger of losing their seats. And then they would no longer be able to get their hands on their inflated salaries, their corrupt expenses, and the opportunity to bully other people.

Being an MP nowadays is a nice little earner. It’s not so much the £57,485 salary as the astounding expenses racket, the grotesque scale of which the public is beginning to grasp. Last year MPs pocketed £78 million in exes, an average of £118,437 each. There has been a huge increase since 1997, and New Labour snouts are deepest in the trough: the top seven names on the expenses league table are all Labour. An informal award used to be made in El Vino’s for Expenses Man of the Year (Palms Outstretched and Fingers Crossed), but Lunchtime O’Booze himself has long been overtaken by politicians. Claire Curtis-Thomas, the Member for Crosby, of whom even well-informed lobby correspondents knew little if anything, heads the list with £168,889 claimed, followed by the ludicrous Keith Vaz with £164,265.