Break a bad rule

Tony Blair has deserved praise for his commitment to the building of democracies in parts of the world where political debate has more commonly been conducted via the shredding machine. But it is to be hoped that citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan, now learning how parliamentary systems can work for the greater public good, did not have their eyes on Westminster on Monday night. Their first questions, at the sight of vengeful Labour backbenchers tearing into the government’s Bill on hunting with dogs, would have been, ‘Where is he, this great champion of democracy? Why has he ordered his minister to drop the carefully built compromise on fox-hunting, and why isn’t he here to explain himself?’

For some, Monday night will have come across as a great victory for people-power. There is little question that the outcome of the vote which was held – a thumping majority for the total abolition of hunting – reflects the views of the majority of MPs. It is just that the vote held was not the one advertised, and not the one around which the preceding debate was conducted. In effect, the government dropped its own Bill and replaced it with a rebel amendment. And all the while, the Prime Minister did not deign to visit the House, but remained in Downing Street, tucked up on the sofa watching the highlights from Wimbledon, or whatever.

Perhaps Mr Blair will claim to have been doing his patriotic duty by cheering on Tim Henman – and given the relative numbers of Britons interested in the issue of hunting with dogs and the fate of our only credible international tennis player, he may well have made the calculation that the public will barely have registered his strange political manoeuvrings on Monday night.