Who cares most about animal welfare?

Are we experiencing a turnaround in the politics of animal welfare, with the Tories on the up? Philip Bowern looks at a fast-changing picture

THE settled view of many in the countryside used to be that with a Conservative government in power the likelihood of significant change to the laws surrounding hunting, shooting, fishing, livestock farming or other animal welfare issues always looked unlikely.

Popular sentiment always had it that Labour was the traditional opponent of long established country sports; and it was Labour, under Tony Blair, which introduced the Hunting Act in 2004, going some way to cementing the view that for those deeply concerned about the fate of animals, Labour should get their vote.

While plenty of country folk dispute the idea that the Hunting Act has had a positive or beneficial effect on the life of the fox or the rural environment more widely, that piece of legislation and other warm words more recently from Labour in Opposition have cemented the view that the party now led by Sir Keir Starmer cares most about animals.

But just this week a leading animal welfare campaigner, the former chief executive of the Badger Trust, Dominic Dyer, has written a thoughtful article warning the Labour Party that it is in danger of losing ground on animal policies to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.

Writing for the online news site, Byline Times, Mr Dyer points out that the Government’s Animal Welfare Plan makes commitments to end live animal exports and the use of primates as pets; to ban the import of wild animal trophies; and end mountain hare shooting as well as introduce a new Animal Sentience Bill.

He makes reference to the fact that Zac Goldsmith, a strong advocate for the animal welfare agenda, has earned a job at the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs. After losing his parliamentary seat he was given a peerage by the Prime Minister, apparently to retain his influence on animal issues.

All of this, added to the clear influence of Boris’s fiance, now wife, Carrie – a powerful advocate for wildlife and the environment in her role as head of communications at the animal

The PM understands being good to animals can be good for electoral fortunes DOMINIC DYER

rights charity, the Aspinall Foundation – and a picture emerges, Mr Dyer suggests, of a Tory Party that is taking a different direction to Conservative governments in the past on animal issues.

He writes: “It now appears that the Prime Minister also understands that being good to animals can also be good for the electoral fortunes of his party. This is in stark contrast to Theresa May’s disastrous election campaign in 2017.

“May’s commitment to bring back fox hunting and a failure to keep a promise to ban the UK ivory trade mobilised tens of thousands of firsttime voters to remove the Conservatives’ parliamentary majority with the loss of safe seats such as Kensington and Chelsea and Canterbury.”

Labour, of course, appeared to reach a high point under Jeremy Corbyn in 2017. Things went backwards in 2019, with the party suffering its worst result for at least a genertion and many put that down to its failure, not only to hold onto so called “Red Wall” seats in the north and the Midlands, but also because it alienated rural voters with an overemphasis on animal rights over more pressing rural issues.

After addressing the NFU conference in February this year, Mr Corbyn’s successor, Sir Keir Starmer, appeared to acknowledge that problem, appointing shadow environment secretary Luke Pollard to work on re-setting Labour as a party that can win rural seats. Mr Pollard, the

MP for Sutton and Devonport in Plymouth, has pledged to embark on a rural fact-finding mission to find out what rural voters want.

For Mr Dyer, who used to work for the Labour Party under the late Mo Mowlam, a minister in Tony Blair’s government, the issue is clear – Labour needs to up its game on animal issues and call out the Tories where, in his view, they are not going far enough. Mr Dyer writes: “It is time for Starmer to make a keynote speech on animal welfare and lay out a new vison for how Labour will build on its past achievements and respond to the Government with an even more ambitious agenda for making Britain a better place for both people and animals.”

Others, however, see if very differently, warning that while both

Labour and the Conservatives might be able to appeal to younger, urban voters on issues that they have strong feelings about, but little actual experience of, rural voters who live and work in the countryside, will begin to feel marginalised.

There is evidence Boris Johnson understands this too... balancing his ministerial team at Defra with the appointment just last month of Lord Benyon, a landowner, keen defender of grouse moor management and supporter of country sports. As Richard Benyon, before he left the House of Commons in 2019, he was an MP and had previously served at Defra from 2010 to 2013.

It is clear the political battle for the countryside and the people and animals who live there is raging as strongly as it ever did.

Stefan Rousseau > Is the PM’s animal-loving wife Carrie, pictured here with the couple’s dog Dilyn during the 2019 election campaign, influencing government policy?