Local Interest

In principle, I do not  much care for local referendums, or indeed for national ones.

Nor for foxhunting, although I am not keen on banning it, and I despise the way in which that ban was used to persuade disgraceful Labour MPs to support the Iraq War.

As for fracking, it is one among the many potential ancillaries to coal and nuclear power. Even if there is more than an air of superstition about its proponents.

UKIP and sections of the Conservative Party want county-by-county referendums on foxhunting, while Labour in Scotland, and probably Labour in general before long, want local referendums on fracking.

Both of which sound good to me.

Not because I should necessarily welcome, or even very much care about, the vote against foxhunting in each and every county without exception.

Nor because I should necessarily welcome the vote against fracking in most or all of the areas that were ever asked about it.

But because those results would shot the fox of what might be called the Breitbart Tendency, as once there was a Militant Tendency.

That Tendency would be told to frack off.

Why, then, do those areas generally vote Conservative? Insofar as they still do, that would then become very starkly a question for the Labour Party.