Idiot hunters shot one ingénue on a hunt at the weekend. This was unconnected to Wednesday’s royalist siege of the commons and the poisonous atmosphere in Parliament Square. Five protestors got into the paper bag-like House of Commons while hundreds of others out of the main crowd fought with the police and each other (the C4 News report suggested), in an attempt to get their fox maiming message over. The countryside alliance’s hired rentamobs, pissed up so they’d have been paid early by the landowners, had done their job.

There’s an obvious danger that these fuckos will be portrayed as conscientious heroes, battling a dictatorial government – not a bunch of piqued upper-class whingers (and their employees/cohorts – the human forms of the hounds) whose insignificant need to hunt animals with other animals must be allowed to continue, simply because it's happened for a long time and is a pastime of the powerful. When a good number of the tiny minority who engage in this pathetically symbolic pursuit are so influential that they can co-ordinate the sort of stunt on the floor of the Commons, then we can begin to realise the shadowy origins of hunters and their access to, literally, the corridors of power. In a side order of royalist militancy, one of the Commons clowns (Luke Tomlinson) is a ‘close friend’ of ‘Prince’ Harry.

It was more then predictable that someone from the hunting fraternity would try and get into the Commons and the fact that it happened could be seen as a warning to Labour politicians. These lank-haired fops were the establishment’s version of flying pickets and, despite their bristling gesticulation, neatly illustrated the rather pathetic and insignificant nature of the cause they are pursuing, and pursuing to a disproportionately anti-democratic extent. If the culture (and its huge economy we keep being told about) meant that so much to you, you’d find ways round the ban. Mechanical foxes on string perhaps.

The house passed the motion by 190 votes, indication enough of the MPs’ intentions and the majority will of the nation. One thing is for sure, the hunting ban will go through now because, having seen the vociferous demonstrations, our unforgiving cabinet will no doubt like to shove the ban in their faces even more now, particularly as a salve for left-wingers who have agitated against many things since 1997 to no end. Parliament Act might well be used if the Lords piss about again. Thus the demo could also be seen as a revival of the dispute between the Commons and the Lords, in terms of Labour's removal of the bulk of the Tory hereditary peers from the unelected chamber. Either way, it is an obvious fact that Tory peers are involved in hunting and that Labour's reform of the Lords and likely use of the Act to get the Bill through is a factor in the Cuntryside Alliance's gripes.

(as for the equally antiquated Sergeant @ Arms department, which also could well have collaborated in letting the hunters in, this is surely another ancien regime feature coming to an end. Look out for a fat private sector contract for Parliamentary security going out to tender in the near future.)

Like Tony Blair considering quitting because of family concerns (stop reproducing, you new man/lad nouveau christian freak) and Batman father-for-justice protestors it seems Brit consumers can only get really worked up about matters that directly affect them. Blair has, in indulging the right-wing agenda on immigration, public procurement, health and education, inadvertently created more militancy in policy areas like hunting, farming, fuel prices, the EU, council tax and telephone masts. All of these are big topics in the green and pleasant lands.

If the outrage of this minority consumer group was proportionately applied to the anti-war demos in February 2003, then we really might have influenced policy.