What is the rebel plan?

This hunting ban delay. I don’t get it. I had convinced myself that the Rebel Alliance were quite capable of playing a good game regarding the ban on fox hunting. I once wrote that the rebels were sophisticated enough (bad word, perhaps knowledgeable or experienced would have been better) to fight for their freedoms within the context of state institutions. It certainly looks like that is being borne out by the rebel injunction which could delay the ban for up to a year but can that really be the game? Is the delay really what they are playing for? The cost of the delay is to give the government an easier time come next years general election, the very time when the alliance could have quite conceivably done some harm to their enemy. There would have certainly been quite a bit of media coverage.

A cynical deal, some say, but in such deals both sides generally gain some advantage and I can’t see the few months of extra hunting as a real benefit.

So it’s something else, but what? The advantage to the government is clear but what of the rebel base, The Countryside Alliance?

Could it be that they are trying to diffuse a potentially nasty situation come the general election? Is this ploy their attempt at controlling the more militant sections of their loose alliance of country folk? Are they trying to avoid exactly the same bottom line situation that the government are, namely lots of nasty goings-on focused on and probably increased by the single event of the general election and all the negative media coverage that could bring to both the alliance and the government?

If this is their gambit and word gets out then this could be a catalyst for even more polarisation in the rebel camp.