UK: Mr Tony Blair conceded yesterday that his government's ban on hunting with hounds will be a general election issue, as the Countryside Alliance began its legal challenge in the courts.
As members of the alliance went to the High Court to seek a judicial review, the Prime Minister again attempted to distance himself from Thursday's final and conclusive decision by Labour MPs in favour of the government bill carried through parliament in government time.
The Rural Affairs Minister, Mr Alan Michael, again insisted that the Prime Minister had been "entirely consistent" on the issue, as Mr Blair said: "This was always going to be an issue at a general election. It will be an issue because there are very strong feelings about it."
He repeated that he had wanted a delay to the ban coming into force so that people could take their case to the country and to give hunt people time to adapt to the ban.
"There are people who feel passionately that hunting is integral to their way of life. There are people who feel equally passionate that it is barbaric and cruel," said Mr Blair.
"I have been trying to find a way through, that is my job as Prime Minister. It has always been a free vote, and I am afraid the views on both sides are very, very entrenched."
He went on: "We will now go to the courts, and I have no doubt it will be an issue [ in the election], but it was always going to be an issue."
However, with the "way through" to postponement of the ban until 2006 or 2007 closed off by the House of Lords, and the ban due to come into effect in February, Mr Blair faced the much more immediate prospect of fighting the election against the backdrop of two legal challenges and threatened civil disobedience by pro-hunt protesters.
The former master of the rolls, Lord Donaldson, said yesterday that the High Court challenge to the ban had "100 per cent strength", on the basis that the use of the 1949 Parliament Act to force it through was invalid.
As campaigners confirmed they would also mount a challenge in the European Court once the new law comes into force, a pro-hunt Labour peer, Baroness Mallalieu, said the parliamentary system had failed to protect a minority from "unfair legislation" and so they would look to the courts to do so.
The Countryside Alliance has pledged to test loopholes in the ban and claims 50,000 people will be prepared to break it in a campaign of civil disobedience.
And as one police authority warned that the Home Office would have to bear the additional cost of policing the new legislation, the political tension rose further yesterday as landowners said they would protest by being "obstructive" with a series of measures open to them, like barring Ministry of Defence training exercises and possibly denying access to utility companies to work on networks.
Mr Michael expressed confidence that the courts would uphold the ban and appealed to huntsmen not to break the law.
"The legal advice I have is that the Bill as it is complies satisfactorily with the human rights legislation," he said.