Yet another letter to my MP

Mark 2 Comments

Dear Mr Pursglove

Because we might have another general election some time fairly soon, I’d like to just share these thoughts with you, please.

I was surprised, in a way, to read that the Conservative manifesto promised a free vote on fox hunting (and the Prime Minister voiced her support for it). You may remember how this appeared in the Conservative manifesto:

Franz Amling [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
So, there was a short paragraph on farm animal welfare, followed by a long paragraph on post offices etc, and then followed by a very short paragraph on ripping wild animals apart for fun.  It was bizarre that any party would include this matter in their manifesto when there is such a large popular majority against it, and almost certainly a significant parliamentary majority against it too.  I can’t quite see why any political party would include such a measure unless it were living in the distant past or was highly reliant on donations from those small but rich parts of society that seem to want to live in a Siegfried Sassoon type of England that ended long before the 2004 Act.

However, I found this Conservative policy extremely useful in getting out the Labour vote – not quite useful enough for you to lose your seat in Corby and east Northants, but pretty useful nonetheless. There were plenty of people who expressed some doubts about Jeremy Corbyn but who reacted well to the suggestion, ‘Well, if you don’t want to vote for Jeremy, I bet you do want to vote for foxes’.  This will have been a line that worked across the country.

And it is a policy that reeks of the past and of nastiness.  What a gift!!  It is also an approach which strengthens the resolve of any Remain MP to keep on fighting as if it’s good enough for a fringe fieldsport then it must be OK for the future of the country.

So my request to you is to ask your government colleagues, please, whether this is a subject that a minority Conservative government will take before parliament in the next five years?

The only way that the Conservative party can escape the impacts of this bizarre obsession with killing wildlife for fun would be to include in your next manifesto a promise not to give parliament a vote on this subject as avoiding the subject just won’t do.

And, since it will be a free vote if any such vote occurs, please tell me how you would vote yourself.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

 

 

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2 Replies to “Yet another letter to my MP”

  1. Very well put Mark it is a absolute disgrace that a few MPs can force something through that 80% of the population are against.
    Worse still they try and justify it by saying country people support it well that is nonsense but anyway townspeople are just as entitled to their opinion as country dwellers.
    Worst of all is the simple fact justifying it by saying they need controlling is absolute rubbish.In my experience of working on farms and seeing Foxes there are certainly less now than at any time in the last sixty years which must mean they do not need controlling now that they are not being purposefully bred to be hunted.

  2. They wrote that manifesto on the assumption of a big majority. Rather different now, isn’t it ? And that applies to Michael Gove, too – he’s in a right fix – how is he going to put across his beliefs on the environment without losing votes every time he opens his mouth ? He is all about enthusing the faithful, not swinging the uncertain. The way things are going he’ll probably be relieved that he won’t have to do it for too long. If he does stand up in Parliament and announce an intention to repeal the act banning fox hunting he might as well wave a big banner saying ‘vote Jeremy, vote Labour’.

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