I met Ben Wallace for the first time the other day. He was pretty well the only minister who came out of Rishi Sunak’s government with his reputation enhanced. I had a humdinger hunt ball hangover from hell – quite appropriate, given that he is leading the campaign to save trail hunting. He, on the other hand, was bright-eyed, bushy tailed and firing on all cylinders, in spite of a long drive to London from the north, where he was MP for Wyre and Preston North for 19 years. A good innings for a 55-year-old.
We met in one of those venerable clubs in St James’s where Jimmy’s son John mixes the perfect Bloody Mary. He adds just enough Worcester sauce to make one pace oneself. And I needed to take a pull to get through ten questions without having to recharge my glass.
Everything about Wallace is authentic. He did a seven-year stint in the army before eventually becoming defence secretary for four years – a job he was born to. But like all great military men, he knew when to pull back his front line. He is now passionate about defending rural communities and not afraid to stick his neck out.
What the hell has trail hunting got to do with racing, you might wonder? Well, quite a lot, in his opinion. Wallace makes the point that you cannot pick and choose which parts of rural life you support: ‘You simply cannot split hairs between liking horse racing but not supporting trail hunting.’
Why has he taken on the thankless task of marshalling the defences against a Labour government’s latest assault on rural Britain? ‘I think a persecuted minority who are deeply part of the fabric of this country deserve to be spoken up for. I hate it when I see anybody being bullied and I think this Labour government and people like the saboteurs and Chris Packham are really about bullying people. I’ll stand up to them.’
Wallace makes the point that you cannot pick and choose which
parts of rural life you support
That said, it’s no easy job corralling rural folk from Cornwall to Scotland who probably range in their emotions from throwing in the towel to burning down the House of Commons. So how does he feel it’s going to pan out? ‘The government will make the same mistakes they made 20 years ago, which is to legislate from a position of ignorance and wrong motives. It’s a very odd thing to be banning something that’s legal and not about animal welfare, if it’s done correctly. The only reason you would want to do that is if you don’t like the people who are doing it. It will be a dog’s breakfast again because their motives are chippy and ideological.’
Wallace was considered to be the wrong fit for the chairmanship of the British Horse-racing Authority (BHA), which has to curry favour with a hostile Labour government. But that does not diminish his understanding of how racing needs to interact better with the government. ‘If you look at Ireland, it’s still benefiting from Charlie Haughey, a taoiseach who had all sorts of methods of liking racing. At the moment, racing is a sidelined sport. It’s stuck in some minor directorate in the DCMS where officials have no say with the Treasury. We also have racing stakeholders who think it’s someone else’s problem to fix. Ultimately, racing doesn’t have the sophisticated demands of the government that it should do. Why are horse breeders in this country not treated as agriculture? It’s about a lot more than arguing about the levy.’
I was now nursing the remnants of my Bloody Mary, and my mind was straying on to what might come next, but it seemed foolhardy, given that I was talking to an ex-defence secretary, not to let the conversation drift from a very rural-centric childhood in Dorset to the conflict in Ukraine. ‘The trouble is that Trump is more interested in the wedding than the marriage,’ he says. ‘Look at Gaza. He never sees anything through. He has yet to pick up the phone to Vladimir Putin and say, “If you don’t stop this, we are through.” And yet he’ll do it to Volodymyr Zelensky. So it goes back to my point about bullying. I don’t like people who bully.’
Is he done with politics? ‘Well, never say never, but who knows what the cycle will be and I’ve done a lot of it.’ Reform? I ask with some trepidation. ‘It’ll be the economy, stupid, at the next election. And I don’t see them having any credibility on that front. They’re a one-trick pony.’
Wallace is now a slimmed-down version of the defence secretary who rode a Challenger tank. These days he is more beagle than bloodhound. And in a throwback to his rural childhood, top of his bucket list is to ride out for a trainer. Given his altruistic passion, I wouldn’t bet against him doing that.
He would also be a valuable member of Lord Allen’s new independent BHA board, if they want to avoid groupthink. Having raced with his grandfather since he was a young boy, Wallace has a deep knowledge of racing and a shrewd view of the world it needs to reach out to. But I suspect his persona may not fit ‘in this cycle’.
That won’t change his perfect Boxing Day: going to the Vale of Lune Harriers meet followed by watching the King George at Kempton Park on TV.
Comments