The Hunting Bill is insulting and appalling – but it could be worse

Few issues have highlighted the more shameful qualities of the Blair government quite as starkly as hunting: its moral turpitude, instinctive mendacity, fundamental gutlessness, endless dithering, ugly populism and blind conformity to suburban prejudice. Labour MPs who favour a ban feel understandable resentment that after six years no Bill has reached the statute book. Tony Blair lied at least twice while attempting to ingratiate himself with anti-hunting audiences by asserting that he had voted for a ban, when in fact he had done no such thing. Fear of the Countryside Alliance, which has in the last five years produced the two largest demonstrations ever seen on the streets of London, temporarily at least put the government off a ban on hunting.

Now at last it has produced a Bill of sorts. The minister responsible, Alun Michael, is one of those meaningless politicians who flourish for a time under Blairism, but for complicated reasons never quite get to the top. Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, is another case in point. A curious syndrome afflicts New Labour. The Prime Minister himself remains impervious to damaging accusations, however well founded. But those loyal characters who stand up for him become figures of ridicule and are liable to be destroyed – Stephen Byers and Peter Mandelson are the most famous examples.

In the case of poor Alun Michael, loyalty to the Prime Minister cost him his place in the Cabinet. He was prevailed upon by Downing Street to step down from the government to fight as the Millbank candidate in the Welsh Assembly elections: humiliation duly followed. It must be especially galling for Michael that the man who ran his disastrous campaign, Peter Hain, now occupies the Cabinet seat that he must feel is rightfully his.

It says something for the Prime Minister that he felt sufficiently guilty about Michael that, after a suitable period of rest and recuperation, he brought him back into the government, though not at Cabinet level.