The General Election 2024

Our thoughts (and they may not be what you were expecting)

It’s highly unlikely that anyone reading this doesn’t already know that there is a snap General Election taking place in the UK on 4 July (or that there are more people set to vote in elections around the world in 2024 than at any other time in history).

Organisations like Protect the Wild will of course have been thinking hard about the election. We all knew it was coming (the current government had to call an election before January 2025) even if we didn’t know precisely when. So how should we react - pour precious resources into writing a ‘manifesto’, try to persuade supporters who to vote for, or make pro-wildlife demands of politicians? All three perhaps?

Truth be told, at Protect the Wild we’re pretty realistic about these things. We could spend time and money on a glossy ‘message to the candidates’, but to be honest very few of them would read it. We already have a good idea of what the politics of most Protect the Wild supporters are. And you only have to listen to the news to know that politicians are absolutely fixated on the economy (not wildlife or the environment) because that is what the vast majority of the electorate is fixated on.

That doesn’t mean that we’re not interested in the election.

Of course we’re interested in the election. It matters hugely. Like almost everyone else we want change (in other words, the current government gone) and we want to feel hopeful again (mainly that whoever makes up the new government will actually give a damn this time). But the fact is that we’re a campaigning organisation. Not just for a few weeks or months in the run-up to an election, but every single day. All year round.

We lay out the arguments against hunting, against shooting, against the badger cull consistently, week in, week out. And we try to be as strategic, forward-thinking, and as innovative as we can:

• We moved onto Substack long before others in our sector did (and average around 900k - 1 million views a month).

• We’ve commissioned animations (like the one in this post) that have been viewed literally millions of times.

• We have honed our use of social media and have thousands of interactions across multiple platforms every single day.

• We’ve developed a Support Network and Equipment Fund that helps out front-line groups.

• We’re building a new site which we think will be a game-changer in the battle against the supporters and enablers of the ‘blood business’ - that will be with us soon.

The work to ‘protect the wild’ doesn’t begin now. It began years ago, and it will continue into the future. No matter who wins, no matter who is in No 10, no matter what they say they are concerned about or what they appear not to be interested in at all.

After the election

The party’s manifestos are all being delivered this week. We will look at them each and every one of them in turn, but if you’re pro-wildlife there isn’t really that much to get excited about: some lines (not pages) on hunting, and pledges to stop the cull - but no details when. Shooting isn’t mentioned. Party leaders know that when they wake up the morning after the election the NHS will still be crumbling after years of underfunding, council services will still be stripped to the bone, and you and us will still be worried about high levels of tax and interest rates.

Whoever wins next month will already be thinking about how to win a second term, and - once the economy has been returned to normality after fourteen years of ‘greed is good’ economics - then perhaps we might see the great changes many of us want: a proper ban on hunting, an end to the rampaging greed and destruction of the shooting industry, for science to finally win and end the cruel and ineffective badger cull.

But we want those changes to come sooner of course. So we will fight for them: today, after the election, next month, every month until we win.

The evidence says that wildlife will not be a priority for whoever wins next month, but there is a legal challenge to the badger cull due next month (thanks to the efforts of Tom Langton), shooters will start slaughtering Red Grouse in August, and fox hunters will be out killing fox cubs again. Whoever wins we will push as hard as we possibly can to make wildlife a priority - that’s what we’re here as an organisation for and what the individuals at Protect the Wild are motivated by. Wildlife, the environment, Nature itself, demands nothing less of us.

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

Vote for the Wild

It’s frankly quite hard to get enthused about this election. Very little separates the parties because they daren’t alienate an electorate that is fractious, tired, and utterly fed up with politicians after years of broken promises and being lied to.

It’s been difficult for months not to think solely in terms of who we DON’T want to run the country. This will be more of an election based on tactical voting than ever before and if that sounds cynical, it’s how a lot of people are thinking.

Which does though bring us to the last point we’d like to make: please don’t think the election is a foregone conclusion. Please don’t stay at home on 4 July. The loathsome Wiltshire Police and Crime Commissioner Philip Wilkinson was re-elected in May with a hugely reduced majority. Just 22.72% of the electorate voted. Most of them didn’t vote for him. If Wiltshire had voted tactically he would have been booted out. Every vote might just matter.

Especially a Vote for the Wild.

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Leaving a gift in your Will to Protect the Wild is a way to keep putting your beliefs into action, long after your lifetime. 

Our work aims to empower people to protect British wildlife. In just a few years, from our beginnings as a small group of activists, we have accomplished a great deal. We’ve funded several undercover investigations, pressured major landowners to end hunting on their land, created viral animations, established a nationwide activist support network, published groundbreaking reports and so much more.

And we’re delighted to have partnered with expert will writers Octopus Legacy to offer our supporters a free will writing service.