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Politics

The last act of a desperate Prime Minister — to bring back the Hunting Bill

Peter Oborne

Saturday, 17th April 2004

Next month marks the tenth anniversary of the death of John Smith, the event which opened the way to Tony Blair’s own leadership of the Labour party. Smith has always been an ambiguous figure for Tony Blair. He conspired against Smith when he was leader, while under Blair, John Smith’s brief period in charge has practically been written out of official Labour party history. Smith, who stood for a different kind of Labour, remains a standing reproach to the media-obsessed, meretricious, modernising doctrine which Tony Blair has made all his own. The celebrations and reassessments of John Smith’s life this summer will be subversive occasions, reminders that Labour is capable of taking a different kind of direction from the one in which Tony Blair has led it over the last ten years.

The Prime Minister is very low in the water this weekend. Downing Street has the air of a departure lounge, so many staff are leaving. Roger Liddle, the genial, blinking European expert, is the most recent to jump. Tony Blair has lost control of his domestic agenda, while his overseas adventure is not far from collapse. It is by no means impossible that Tony Blair might choose this summer’s tenth anniversary to step down and hand over to Gordon Brown, an event which some MPs believe might be followed by an autumn general election.

If Blair decides to carry on, then he urgently needs to reconnect with his sour and almost disfranchised Labour MPs. The easiest, cheapest and most certain method is to bring back the Bill to ban hunting, which ended up becalmed in the House of Lords last year. Ministers say privately that the decision to ‘resolve the issue’ during this Parliament has already been taken in principle, though the timing has not been set. The Hunting Bill could be brought back under the provisions of the Parliament Act, rushed through the Commons in a day, and straight to the Lords, which would be powerless to stop it.