Simon Hart

Andy Burnham’s plan sounds rather decent, removing the fear factor from whipping and replacing it with a softer, cuddlier function. The whips office ‘should be our HR department, not something to be feared’, he wrote to Labour MPs last week. There’ll be no Francis Urquhart in Team Andy. Sit on a bean bag, enjoy a hot chocolate and explain your plans to bring down the government. The worrying thing about Burnham’s promise of a more collegiate type of whipping is that it misunderstands what whips do. We can blame television and the media for the exaggerated depiction of their role, and perhaps the old hunting expression ‘whipping’ has passed its sell-by date, conjuring up the idea that the role is only based on fear.

Last month, Boris Johnson marked one year as Prime Minister. He did so not by making a speech from Downing Street but instead by travelling north to Orkney in Scotland. Those few days also saw a historic cabinet meeting, focused solely on strengthening the Union, a sign of the government’s commitment to the centuries-old family of nations that makes up the United Kingdom. There are those who may wonder why the Prime Minister feels the need to spell out this commitment. Surely the UK has been bound together in a common cause during the Covid crisis? The numerous Treasury intervention schemes, Ministry of Defence field hospital, sharing of data – the UK government and its devolved partners have been forced to work together for the first time in more than 20 years.

As I passed the Momentum rally in Parliament Square last week, I was reminded of the last time there was such a packed demonstration on Parliament's doorstep. There might not be a huge crossover between Jeremy Corbyn's supporters and Countryside Alliance members, but both groups seem equally passionate.  Huge numbers of rural people protested against the last Labour government for a whole host of reasons, triggered by the bill to ban hunting. The largest demonstration brought over 400,000 people to London and our opponents had no response other than to poll the marchers, find that over 80% of them supported the Conservatives and argue that their protest could therefore be ignored by Labour politicians.

The reasons why England and Wales voted so convincingly for a Conservative Government on Thursday will be debated forever, but one of the most obvious is the complete rejection of both Labour and Liberal Democrats in any constituency that has a hint of the countryside about it. This is graphically illustrated by the post-election constituency map. Actually, suggesting that the voters rejected those parties is probably the wrong way round. The truth is that those parties have rejected rural voters.

So hunting returns to the front page of the Telegraph, just like old times. But today provides an intriguing variation on the norm. Instead of Tories calling on the Prime Minister to scrap the Act (my preferred route) we have Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru leading calls to make some relatively minor changes in the light of a new study into the Hunting Act's failings. The detail is simple, if a little dull. At the moment farmers can only use two dogs to locate and flush a fox into the open so it can be shot to protect his livestock. The research shows that if you use two dogs instead of more you will find half as many foxes and chase those foxes for twice as long before you can shoot them.