Why a doggie welfare state is totally barking
That the British love animals has never surprised me. When you have trouble coming clean about your feelings and live in morbid fear of rejection or conflict – as so many in this land do – heaping affection on a dog instead seems just the ticket. I’ll never forget the divorced mother of a friend insisting that, with her two new, highly strung puppies, she simply had no interest in or time for dating (men).
Politicians have zoned in on the nation’s soft spot (read: furious psychological need) for furry creatures with a zeal that is quite remarkable and not without genius.
Of course, for some time the Tories have been keen to show that they’re as pro cuddle-and-cute as the rest of us – and quite right, too. Witness Michael Gove’s proposals to increase jail time for animal cruelty, ban pet shops from selling puppies and recognise animals as “sentient” beings.
It wasn’t going to be long until the ultimate party of virtue signallers, the nation’s self-designated guardians of the weak and helpless, got stuck in. Labour’s new animal welfare proposals are a gauntlet thrown violently down; the start of a political arms race for Most Kind to Kittens. Who can be nicest about and to animals? Whose humanity extends most readily in all directions, transcending the selfishly andro-centric?
The Tories may insist that Labour is “belatedly playing catch-up” on the animal front but the policies, outlined in a draft document called Animal Welfare for the Many Not the Few, are nonetheless a headline-stealing mix of the clever and the surreal. But, in true Corbynite Labour form, it all goes a bit far. “For The Many Not the Few” – heretofore Labour’s slogan for humans – verges worryingly close to giving animals similar rights, entitlements and, most strikingly, class disadvantages as people.
Should poor dogs and cats be penalised just because they’re from low-income backgrounds? They should not: Labour thus proposes that taxpayers fund veterinary care for pets whose owners can’t afford their medical costs. Of course, this all makes sense in the context of a grand plan in which pets are decreed a literal part of the family; Corbyn wants to drastically strengthen the rights of tenants to keep pets in rented accommodation.
Democracy for dogs will undoubtedly appeal to many and perhaps even offer a rallying cry for those in two minds about human entitlements. But an unsettling shift is evident. Where once being A Good Person was about condemning animal cruelty, now it seems to be about offering animals what looks awfully like their own welfare state. Pets, it appears, are people too.
As the parties up their bids for dominance, where next? Will yelling at your dog for fouling on the sofa become a punishable offence? Will those moving house be required to offer their cats cognitive behavioural therapy to help them acclimatise? Will there be a row over giving kittens the right to vote?
One can’t help but wonder if, in the desperate hustle to seem most virtuous, our political parties are actually helping build an Orwellian universe in which our four-legged companions take over, Animal Farm-style. On Labour’s part, however, it’s a political strategy they may come to regret. Every sensible person knows that cats would vote Conservative.