Let’s set the cops on barbaric fox-hunters

Among those deeply disappointed with the Conservative party’s victory on 7 May was Britain’s diverse and vibrant community of wild animals. They have not yet daubed anti-Tory slogans on war memorials or marched through city centres screaming that they are not going to take it any more — and still less written vacuous and hyperbolic tirades for the Guardian. But they are deeply worried and consider themselves vulnerable to the assaults from a Conservative government untrammelled by the moderating influence of those sentimentalists the Lib Dems.

And so badgers are stocking up on gas masks and the foxes are doing their callisthenics, so as to outpace some psychopathic fat toff on a wheezing mare, and bulk–buying aniseed spray to befuddle the hounds. Others — such as hen harriers — appear to have given up the ghost altogether and have plumped for extinction as the only viable option. Their fears are entirely justified: the Conservatives have a truly shocking record on conservation.

Given the opportunity, the party will side with any and every lobby group which wishes to exterminate or persecute wild animals, either for reasons of money, or because they are in our way, or just for the sheer hell of it, the fun.

Already the first salvos have been fired against the wildlife. Sir Ian Botham, a Tory and former cricketer, has sprung to the ‘defence’ of Britain’s very few remaining hen harriers and lambasted the RSPB for not doing more to protect them. The charity is useless, Beefy fumed — far better to entrust the hen harriers’ survival to the, uh, gamekeepers. Yes, Botham is part of the shooting lobby and probably cares less about hen harriers than I do about batting averages or whether or not some foreign cricketer called Kevin Pietersen is a ‘complete cunt’.