The hunting ban was introduced by Tony Blair and Hilary Armstrong, neither of whom voted for it, in order to buy off Labour MPs over the invasion of Iraq.
Blair bet Prince Charles a tenner that hunting would be continuing unimpeded 10 years after the ban had come into force. He won his bet.
If that sounds disgraceful, then that is because it was.
But the ban's almost total non-enforcement has become the most egregious example in many a long year of the different application of the law to certain classes and political persuasions rather than to others.
Indeed, the Police effectively act as escorts to many hunts.
That is why I am disinclined to support repeal of the ban.
Such repeal would declare that laws would simply be altered if the right sort of people refused to abide by them.
Moreover, the flat refusal of the Police to enforce the hunting ban would deprive of any case those who might complain that the Police were also, as they would be, flatly refusing to enforce any further legislation against trade unions or industrial action.
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