Fox this, I'm off!

You remember that fox hunting ban? You remember all the moaning us pro-hunt bloggers did about it not being about the protection of foxes but about punishing the landed gentry and the posh for centuries of poshness and horses? You remember all that stuff we said about the fox not really benefiting? Well, my dear guardianistas and observeroids, looks like us Toff Huggers are no longer alone:

The current issue of Horse & Hound contains an interview with one Graham Sirl, who says he despises the League Against Cruel Sports and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for running a lavish campaign that has now produced 'absolutely zero'.

No surprise that Horse & Hound should condemn the ban as an absurd waste of parliament's time, you might think. And it wouldn't be surprising if Graham Sirl wasn't a former chief officer of the League Against Cruel Sports. He's not alone in giving up on the cause he once championed.

In the past decade, the league has lost two chief executives, two chairmen, one treasurer and one regional head. All of them concluded that an effective ban would lead to the slaughter of foxes by farmers with guns who no longer wanted to keep them alive for the hunts to chase. I cannot think of another protest group that has seen so many of its officers go over to the other side. It is as if senior staff of Greenpeace regularly joined the board of Texaco.