If Blair overrules the Lords on hunting, he should abolish them altogether

We have been told from time to time that one reason why the Prime Minister has been so slow in ‘reforming’ the House of Lords is that he feels it is important to have it, but he cannot decide what form it should take. It is important, it is said, for all those reasons why bicameral legislatures are superior to unicameral ones. It avoids elective dictatorship. The executive and its plans are held better to account. There is expertise in the upper house that can be brought to bear on Bills and can revise common sense into them. Above all, a House not run by the whips in the Commons can, by asserting its independence, prevent constitutional abuses. One such example might be the government, using an unwieldy majority in the Commons, passing a law that gives it a temporary electoral fillip while causing permanent damage to the liberties of the people.

One such proposed law, which returned to the Commons this week, is that to ban hunting with dogs. This would appease many of Mr Blair’s enemies in his own party — many of them the same people who hated his stance on Iraq, and who felt that he lied about why he was prosecuting the war. At a time when he is still engaged in a blood sport of another kind — seeing off Gordon Brown once and for all — he needs all the friends he can get. It need not concern Mr Blair that many who wish to ban hunting not only have no idea of the realities of the sport and its place in the countryside, but that foxes are far more likely to be shot, poisoned and otherwise trapped to extinction if it is banned. His only concern is that he gives a cheap thrill to a large number of MPs who would otherwise abhor him totally; and that therefore he might stay as Prime Minister for another four or five years.