The rocky road to a hunt ban

Analysis
By Nick Assinder
BBC News Online political correspondent

Tony Blair may have started the entire fox hunting furore - but he has appeared to do everything possible to avoid it ever since.

Proposed ban sparked mass demonstrations

But now, after years of delay, the government has taken the controversial step of rushing it through Parliament in just one day.

And, inevitably, that has led to a furious response from the opposition and others that, in an attempt to pacify his backbenchers, the prime minister is railroading Parliament.

It certainly appears that Tony Blair has finally decided he can no longer tease his fractious MPs with unfulfilled promises and that the time has come to settle the issue once and for all before it turns into an election issue.

Ministers have continued to seek a compromise designed to take some of the sting out of it by proposing a delay before implementation of a ban, but it now looks virtually certain the ban will be on the statute books within weeks.

Thrown out

All the political manoeuvring over the past years may have had the stated aim of finding a compromise that would be acceptable to the competing sides.

But, probably more importantly, it has also been designed to distance the government, and the prime minister in particular, from whatever actually happens.

And, once again, it is the Lords who are being set up to take the rap for any fresh delays.

Blair has distanced himself from ban

If MPs, as expected, once again demand an outright ban and Peers yet again throw it out, then the Parliament Act will be triggered to ensure the MPs get their way.

If a compromise is agreed with MPs to delay implementation of the ban to a set date - which will be after the last possible date for the next general election in June 2006 - and the Lords reject that, they will once again be blamed for ensuring the ban comes into effect straight away.

Backbench bill

This all echoes the original row which started after the prime minister surprised everyone during his first administration by announcing his intention to ban hunting.

His promise came as the government was going through a difficult period and was seen by many as a diversionary tactic.

Indeed, when a backbencher came up with a bill to do just that, the government ensured it ran out of time in the Commons and could not become law.

The prime minister appears to have decided that he can no longer delay implementing a manifesto pledge and the time has come to let his backbenchers get their way.

The prime minister then declared it had failed because the Lords blocked it. It had not even got that far.

There then followed years of delay as ministers were charged with the impossible task of keeping anti-hunt Labour MPs and supporters on side while, at the same time, avoiding embarrassing mass demonstrations by the Countryside Alliance.

Failed to vote

Meanwhile, it has become difficult to determine precisely what the prime minister's personal view on a ban is.

His official spokesman will only say that the prime minister's view is the same as it has always been, without repeating it.

If that is the case, then Tony Blair is anti-hunting. Yet he has sometimes failed to vote on the issue when it has come before MPs.

What is almost certainly true is that many in the government, and probably the prime minister himself, wish they had never got themselves onto this hook over an issue which, if it had not been raised in the first place, would never have become an issue.

Still, the prime minister appears to have decided that he can no longer delay implementing a manifesto pledge and the time has come to let his backbenchers get their way.

And this time, it may actually happen.