A ban on fox-hunting was one of those things that made New Labour seem alternative and enlightened when the party came to power in 1997. Like the much vaunted ethical foreign policy, it seemed to promise a step change in the political debate, challenging tradition and vested interest and putting moral considerations at the forefront of policy.
The government's enthusiasm for the ban, like its enthusiasm for an ethical foreign policy, did not last long. The prime minister began to see how much easier it was to cosy up to vested interest than to challenge it, and almost since the beginning he has been ducking and weaving on the fox-hunting issue, seeking political advantage at one moment with his own supporters and at another with the powerful countryside lobby. It is this vacillation, revealing a blatant political opportunism that was sustained right up to the dying moments of the parliamentary process, that destroyed the moral high ground that the anti-hunting movement had once enjoyed. It turned a clear ethical principle into an exhibition of tawdry political horse trading.
The consequence is that the pro-hunting lobby have had remarkable success in turning progressive opinion, if not in their favour, then at least to the point of agnosticism on the issue. Tony Blair's lack of moral clarity has betrayed the cause, particularly when he claims moral clarity in support of a real war the justification for which is decidedly dodgy. Even without the prime minister's machinations the spectacle of a government and its parliamentary supporters seeking a ban on one particular method of slaughtering foxes while simultaneously engaging is a policy leading to the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people in Iraq was always going to be difficult to stomach.
The Iraq war has schooled people of all opinions in the difficult field of moral judgement. The questions of right and wrong that it raised were genuine and complicated, requiring people to think for themselves about the relative merits of the war, the chaos and the killing, on the one hand and the removal of the appalling regime of Saddam Hussein on the other. Now people are applying these skills to the question of fox-hunting and finding it to be less clear cut than it first appeared. If the moral flounderings of New Labour have taught the electorate to think for itself then some good has come out of this sorry period. But it means trouble ahead for Mr Blair and his associates.
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