The SNP’s 56 MPs will vote against relaxing the hunting ban on Wednesday, the party has announced. The party’s stance was decided at a meeting of the party this evening, with the SNP saying it is ‘right’ that the party ‘assert the Scottish interest on fox hunting by voting against the Tories’ proposals to relax the ban’.
There are only 90 minutes to debate the measure on Wednesday, but inevitably some of that precious time will be taken up with MPs asking what the ‘Scottish interest’ on this matter is.
What this means now, as I explained earlier, is that the measure is likely to fail. It is one thing to get 285 MPs in favour, but the SNP’s numbers added to the 260 or so MPs who will vote against the measure make it very difficult for the pro-hunting camp.
The result may still work politically for both parties in one sense: in Scotland of course the headline ‘SNP stops Tories relaxing hunting ban’ works beautifully for Nicola Sturgeon’s party. But in England a headline saying ‘SNP stops Tories relaxing hunting ban’ will also help the party if it wishes to stir up more emotion in favour of English votes for English laws. However, some proponents of relaxing the ban would rather that no vote took place unless the Tories were certain of winning it: they believe that such defeats expend the very valuable political capital they have built. This was their argument in the last Parliament: that they were happy to avoid a vote if it meant avoiding a defeat. Now it looks as though they may be set for a defeat they can’t avoid.
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