How on earth did we get into this mess? It is difficult for many of us to get very worked up about foxhunting, but it is easy to get worked up about the idiocy that has brought us to where we are now.
It was obvious from the start that it would end badly. The loss of proportion is staggering. Whatever progressive politics is about, or worth taking on opposing interests for, it is not about views on alternative methods of pest control. Talk of invoking the Parliament Act is like declaring a state of emergency because of a patch of fog on the M4.
I dislike the idea of blood sports. Some of the people who engage in them seem especially unlovely. Unseating the toffocracy is appealing. The trouble comes when we start converting personal prejudices into state action. Not only do we stir up all sorts of unnecessary trouble, we wander into a bog of hypocrisies, inconsistencies and contradictions.
Many of my colleagues have a passion for the issue that is in inverse proportion to its significance. Others have allowed themselves to be imprisoned by pressure groups. Some (including Tony Blair and most of the cabinet, I suspect) would just like it to go away.
It is the last stand of a kind of gesture politics that Labour has taken much trouble to banish on other fronts. The alarm bells first rang for me a few years ago when a packed meeting of Labour MPs howled down the suggestion of an independent inquiry on the issue. The government did set up an inquiry, but it need not have bothered. Minds were already made up.
It seems like rather selective protection to me. In Florida, the fox is a predator. So is the alligator. Have you ever heard the sound of a fox caught by an alligator?
And why is the fox special? This, as regular readers know, is Mazal.
Last night, Mazal went sort of nuts, pouncing around for a bit until she found one of these in the house.
It will not surprise anyone with a cat that the mouse did not survive the encounter. Nor will it surprise anyone with a cat to learn just how long it took the mouse to die: at least two hours. Will the anti-hunt fanatics ban cats, or is it really true that they are more interested in hating people than protecting the fox?
By the way, if they do decide to ban cats, I recommend they keep their distance from Mazal. She has claws and is not afraid to use them.
