Advert snub for pro-Brexit animal charity

BREXIT negotiations are fraught enough without a bitter row over the way other EU countries unnecessarily kill dogs and bulls. But that is precisely what is happening. The controversy began when the Spectator magazine, bible of the Tory Party faithful, carried a two-page advert from Burnie’s Foundation, a charity that helps to alleviate animal suffering.

Unlike most organisations concerned with animal welfare — which believe Brussels-led legislation is the best guarantor of animals’ interests — the foundation is passionately pro-Brexit.

Under the heading: ‘Roll on Brexit’, the Spectator advert highlighted how, in Romania, thousands of stray dogs are killed inhumanely every year and how bullfighting is still tolerated in much of Spain.

Although it conceded that the ban on fox- hunting remains largely unenforced in this country, the charity argued that our record on animal rights is better than that of other European nations and that, post-Brexit, we’ll be free to improve animal welfare even more without being hindered by Brussels.

It said: ‘Brexit means the UK can set an example in standards of animal welfare that are long overdue in Europe.’

The charity wanted to place the same advert in The Economist — the increasingly shrill Remoaner weekly magazine whose largest shareholder is Italy’s Agnelli family (founders of the Fiat car empire) and which perversely insists on calling itself a ‘newspaper’.

But Economist bosses rejected the ad as ‘overtly political’.

An annoyed Stuart Wheeler, the Ukip-supporting financier, wrote a letter to The Economist about the ban. That, too, was rejected. Presumably, it was too political!