As the new Agriculture Bill was going through committee stage late yesterday afternoon, the Labour Party attempted to tack on an amendment that would have stripped subsidies from farmers who allowed hunting on their land. The way the amendment was worded would have excluded any land on which anyone had killed a rat with a terrier in the last 15 years from any farm payments – stripping almost all farmers of their government income. Welcome to the sweeping agrarian reform libertarian revolution, comrades…

The radical amendment – tabled by Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary and Plymouth MP Luke Pollard and other urban MPs- was so poorly formed it undermined Labour’s own Hunting Act’s definition of hunting. Back when Labour held some seats in the countryside, they thought to exclude rats from the Hunting Act as farmers use dogs as the most environmentally friendly form of pest control. The alternatives of laying poison or traps both have damaging environmental consequences…

Looks like Labour aren’t looking to win back any rural voters any time soon. Solely relying on urban seats can’t take them to a parliamentary majority…