Could fox-hunting be the winning formula for Labour?
Is it more ammunition for the class war strategy?
According to ConHome, at the time of July’s Norwich North by election the above was an official Labour flyer used in the failed defence of that seat.
The approach was also used in the Eddisbury by election in 1999 when the climate was much more clement for NuLab.
Well according to the Indy this morning there are, indeed, Labour plans to make an apparent commitment by David Cameron to repeal the controversial 2004 act into an election issue to run alongside the IHT campaign.
Is this going to stick and is it going to help Labour get more of its voters out on election day?
Did it, for instance, make a difference in Norwich where Labour’s 2005 vote of 21,097 was cut down to 6,243? Given the circumstances of that contest it could be argued that it might have just got a few more people out and the size of Labour’s defeat could have been confined just a little.
The down-side is that it could motivate those on the other side of the argument.
The problem with the fox-hunting ban is that although most people have got views on the issue and support the act there’s not that much evidence that many feel strongly enough about it to influence their voting.
December 26th is almost always a slow news day and it will be interesting to see if the Labour moves are used as a peg to report on the standard TV bulletin coverage of the Boxing Day hunts. Maybe that’s the whole point?