Hunt Balls?

Games of cops and robbers sometimes descend into real violence, and that needs to be dealt with. The provisions already exist, and the primary responsibility rests with the parents. Likewise, what we must now call trail hunts sometimes end up with the killing of a fox or other quarry by the hounds, and that needs to be dealt with. The provisions already exist, and the primary responsibility rests with the owners.

I have never liked the hunting ban. Tony Blair used it to buy support for the Iraq War, yet neither he nor the two of his closest allies who were Home Secretary and Chief Whip at the time voted for it in the end. Far more parliamentary time was spent on it than on vastly more urgent matters, and that has remained the case, right down to the Assisted Suicide Bill. As Robert Winston asked in the House of Lords at the time, were they going to ban kosher and halal meat next?

"What about halal meat, eh?", the BNP used to yap in those days, although it and its successors have never said whether they would support the hunting ban if there were also a ban on halal slaughter. Those successors are at it again today. The Greens wanted to ban halal slaughter until it was pointed out that that would have entailed banning kosher slaughter as well. Only Rupert Lowe says bluntly that he would ban both. He is wrong, but it is no wonder that he is out of Reform UK, that he is never on GB News, and that he is not seen on any platform with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. As for Reform, its resident grandee is Ann Widdecombe, who supports both a ban on foxhunting and, like Lowe, the restoration of capital punishment. As Chesterton said, wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice.

So by all means let there be higher standards in farm welfare. Along with a ban on the importation of products that did not meet them. On animal welfare and on environmental responsibility, on consumer protection and on workers' rights, international trade agreements should only ever level up at least to the highest standards that were already in place among the participants, and preferably beyond those.