And so, after seven years of hard pursuit and 700 hours of heated debate, Labour is to ban foxhunting. In February, assuming that the legal challenge by the Countryside Alliance fails, the ancient right of the English and Welsh to chase their furry, fleet-footed quarry will be no more. But banning hunting, like stopping motorists using mobile phones, is easier said than done. It may not be so easy to prevent determined groups riding to hounds in remote areas. That aside, most of us are weakly in favour of a ban, say the pollsters, although we feel uneasy at the outlawing of an ancient countryside tradition by a metropolitan majority.

Most of us, too, recognise dissembling when we see it. Seldom can a prime minister have been less enthusiastic about a policy introduced by his own government. Tony Blair has dodged the votes on hunting and made it clear last week that February was too soon. Downing Street’s last-minute compromise, rejected by the House of Lords, was to delay the ban until July 2006. But if banning hunting is about putting an end to animal cruelty, as Labour claims, what possible justification was there for delaying it for 18 months? The truth is, as everybody knows, animal cruelty has very little to do with it. Compared with the 25,000 foxes killed annually by hunting, 40,000 are shot, 100,000 are run down on the roads and huge numbers die from disease and starvation.

In fact the ban has very little to do with hunting foxes and everything to do with hunting toffs. Labour MPs, if not their prime minister, wanted a victory in the class war to make up for everything from the Tolpuddle martyrs to the miners’ strike. In banning hunting they think they have got it. It will serve them right if it blows up in the government’s face.

There is a wilful myopia over the real nature of cruelty to animals. What about the 900m animals reared in dreadful battery conditions and killed each year? Our forebears were kinder when it came to animal husbandry. When future generations look back it may be with unease at our treatment of dumb animals, not with admiration at the decision to ban hunting.