The new hunting year formally began last week. Should I resubscribe? Politically, the outlook is bleak. In February, Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, announced that Labour would implement a ‘full ban on trail and drag hunting’, on the grounds that there were ‘loopholes’ in Labour’s hunting ban. This even though, when advocating the original ban, Labour said it favoured drag hunting (trail hunting had not then been invented) and was worried only about live quarry.