Pints, Labradors and Hunt Sabs: Labour's Conference Shows It Isn't Listening to the Countryside
The familiar autumnal feeling has dawned across the country. Darker nights closing in, crisper mornings. For large swathes of the English countryside, the seasonal change brings an air of excitement as the trail hunting season kicks off again.
However, in UK politics, the arrival of autumn also signals conference season, which has just concluded.
This year, the Labour Party gathered in Liverpool. Holding conference in a major city makes obvious practical sense. But for a party that has struggled to convince rural voters it understands their way of life, the week did little to close that gap. If anything, it widened it.
Pints, Labs and the "far right"
At BASC's reception in Liverpool, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at Defra, Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, described a Britain of warm ale, black Labradors and country pubs as a "far-right nostalgic vision" that "never really existed".
It was a remarkable thing for a rural minister to say to a room full of rural organisations. For those who live in the countryside, these are not symbols of nostalgia. Village pubs are closing at an alarming rate, and working dogs, plenty of them Labradors, are part of daily life on farms and shoots. The minister's office has since pointed to an Instagram post saying she doesn't consider pubs or Labradors "far right". But the damage was done, ordinary country life had been cast as politically suspect by the very minister meant to represent it.
The fringe
Elsewhere in Liverpool, the anti-hunting lobby was making itself at home. The New Hunting Ban campaign set up at the conference to "raise awareness of hunt sabotage and the need to strengthen the Hunting Act", with a fringe event headlined by Neil Duncan-Jordan, Labour MP for Poole. The setting, a tinsel curtain and what resembled a karaoke-bar stage, was a long way from the corridors of power.
Duncan-Jordan is leading the parliamentary push for a ban. In July 2025 he was one of four Labour MPs stripped of the whip after rebelling over welfare cuts, with one Labour source telling The Times that "persistent knobheadery" was among the reasons. He has since led 61 MPs and peers in writing to Defra, claiming the Hunting Act 2004 is riddled with loopholes, and has made clear a trail hunting ban would only be the beginning: "Whilst a pledge to ban trail hunting is welcome, I fear it could be insufficient."
What his letter to Defra did not include were the numbers. In reality, over the past 20 years more than 250,000 days of hunting have taken place, with just 25 convictions involving hunts registered with them. Spending more parliamentary time and scarce police resources on further legislation would do little beyond distracting from far more pressing rural crimes.
A familiar face
Sharing the stage with him was Rhys Giles, Director of The New Hunting Ban and a member of the North London Hunt Saboteurs, who hails from Primrose Hill, one of London's most expensive postcodes.
Giles back in 2024 was caught on camera playing recordings of hounds in cry from a speaker during a hunt, a tactic sabs use to confuse and redirect hounds. Distracted hounds can easily run onto roads, like the one directly behind Giles in the footage. Is this what sabs mean by protecting animals?
Out of touch
Taken together, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the countryside is being talked about rather than listened to. A rural minister dismisses pubs and Labradors. Meanwhile, a Labour MP who wants to go further than a trail hunting ban shares a conference with the activists who disrupt lawful rural activity every weekend.
As the hunting season gets under way, rural communities will carry on regardless. But they deserve a government that understands them.
