Big Steyn also had a simply wonderful, laugh-out-loud, "gee I wish I had written that" Telegraph column on Tuesday about plans to put closed-circuit tv in British country lanes to nab fox hunting violators. No joke. Some of the choice cuts:

For all the talk of vibrant "multi-culturalism", Blair's Britain is strikingly unicultural - diversity of race, gender and orientation, but a ruthless homogeneity of metropolitan modishness imposed by a highly centralised politico-media culture. America is a federal state and thus local majorities prevail: in New Hampshire, we like hunting; in the gay environs of Fire Island, the thrill of the chase lies elsewhere. Each, as I said, to his own.

In Britain, Soho's views on hunting should be no more relevant than Somerset's opinion of gay leather bars. But they are. And those Left-wing columnists who go on about the "climate of fear" in Bush's America ought to remember that, even in their wildest power-crazed dreams, Bush and John Ashcroft will never be able to issue a national ban on centuries-old traditions merely because they offend metropolitan taste. Nor, unlike the modern British state, are they able to keep the populace under 24-hour video surveillance, whether you're at the railway station, in the shopping centre, or strolling down a leafy country lane.

We are watching you! Hello, hello! A riding crop! And what were you doing with that?

The inability of Conservatives to defend hunting sums up the problems of British conservatism. At the time of the first Countryside March, Joanna Trollope said that the essential ingredients of village life are "church, pub, farms, cottages, a small school and a Big House". That's swell if you're the one in the Big House, but presenting rural Britain as a haven of deference and social order cripples its political viability. In Britain, this is an undeferential age - see Digby Anderson on oiks et al. Rural America is about individual liberty - where even the brokest of broke losers with no teeth can still have a few acres, a rusting trailer, a hunting licence and a "Survivors Will Be Prosecuted" sign at the foot of his drive.

As long as British conservatism recoils from individual liberty and clings to Joanna Trollope Big-House social order, it will be unable to offer a viable modern defence of that which it wishes to conserve.

Sad, but good political sense. You'll have a hard time rallying the great unwashed with calls to save the lifestyle of the big country house. You'll have a much better time of it saying let people hunt if they choose.