Countryside Alliance is tallyho! for a Tory win, but will they get their hunts back?

The Countryside Alliance’s campaign to reintroduce fox hunting via the election of a Conservative Government may be in trouble.

The Countryside Alliance assumed that hunting was banned by left-wing class warriors with little real public support, and a new government would quickly change the law.

However, opinion polls suggest that the ban was popular, particularly in those urban areas that the Conservatives need to win to form a government. For example, a recent Ipsos/Mori poll found that 76 per cent of people surveyed thought hunting with dogs was cruel and 59 per cent of voters would be less likely to back would-be MPs if they found out they supported hunts.

Hunting appears to be a bit of a trigger issue, and may remind voters of the image of an aristocratic Tory Party that the Conservatives would like to leave behind. It now looks like the electoral liability of supporting ‘field sports’ is dawning on some prospective MPs.

Marcus Wood, the Conservatives Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Torbay, has just written an open letter stating his position:

“The whole question of fox hunting has been in the news again this week because it is five years since the hunting ban was passed.

“I have had a number of letters on the issue asking me to make my views clear, partly because political opponents are wrongly implying that a Conservative Government would overturn the ban.

“I think the people have well and truly spoken on this issue. They elected a Government in 2001 who promised to ban fox hunting. There was a subsequent election just after the ban came in, and Labour won again.

“That surely should have drawn a line under it. We have many new and important issues that we need to face, and new pressing decisions to be made. I think 95 per cent of the public will think us wrong to re-open the debate at a time of economic and social crisis like this, so I do not especially welcome the proposal to hold another vote on hunting, even if it is a free vote for Conservatives.

“Much of the Armageddon promised by the pro-hunt lobby before the ban has failed to materialise. Thousands of dogs were not put down, the countryside has not become an economic desert and we are not overrun with packs of marauding foxes. In fact, many of the historic hunts are more popular and successful now than in the pre-ban days.

“David Cameron agreed to a debate on a ‘free vote’ basis because existing Conservative MPs demanded it. The current Parliament has only 193 Conservatives, mostly from rural constituencies; but if we win in 2010 we will be adding at least a hundred new Conservative MPs from urban constituencies whose thoughts on this issue are very different.

“I have always said that — if elected — I am not going to vote to re-instate hunting with dogs and I know that many of my fellow Conservative PPCs are inclined to the same view.

“We cannot know the make-up of the next House of Commons, much less know the terms and details of a future Bill, but it is not true that a Conservative victory at the next election will necessarily lead to an end to the ban on hunting with dogs.”

So, are the Conservatives just stringing the Countryside Alliance along for their money and votes, or are the Tories really committed to the reintroduction of hunting?

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