THERE could hardly be a more marked contrast than between the urban snarl of Westminster and the beauty of the English countryside on a tranquil autumn morning, but the two are now locked together as the future of hunting enters yet another phase.

The corridors of power will be burnt to a cinder over the coming weeks as factions from both sides rush around exploring the Parliamentary process to its limits, looking for loopholes, clauses and jiggery-pokery that will enhance their cause.

Even after they've done that it won't all be over. Lawyers must be rubbing their hands at the prospect of a gravy train heading their way. Appeals to the European Court of Human Rights are already being floated and the only thing you can be sure of in this whole sorry mess is that it will have longer legs than Paula Radcliffe.

Sadly it has long since ceased to be an issue of animal welfare - the Government's own Burns inquiry established that hunting is as humane as any other method of fox control and more so than some that would replace it - and to many country folk there is a strong whiff of bigotry and old fashioned class prejudice in the air.

What surprised some observers of last Monday's debate in the House of Commons, although it shouldn't really have done, is that anti-hunt MPs didn't support the Government's proposals to licence hunting.

These were so draconian the vast majority of hunts could never have complied and licensing would have been a ban in all but name.

But hunting's opponents couldn't even stomach that and instead pressed for a complete ban, which was what eventually went through.

In doing so, they have ironically given hope to the hunting side.

The issue now has to go to the House of Lords and there was a real fear among some pro-hunters that if the Government's licensing plan was put to them, some in the upper chamber might be persuaded this was a reasonable compromise and accept it.

Now it has been amended to a complete ban, the Lords are unlikely to have much truck with the Bill.

So it bounces out once more and the possibility of invoking the Parliament Act to force it through comes into play.

But does it? There are plenty of legal brains ready to argue this is now not the same legislation. It has been altered so much as to completely change its character and so the Act cannot now be enforced.

Indeed, the new Leader of the House, Peter Hain, who adopts an anti-hunt stance, had warned before Monday's debate that a banning amendment would be a "wrecking amendment", but the antis just couldn't help themselves.

Of course, both sides have tricks up their sleeves, but the bottom line is that if - and it is a mighty big "if" - a hunt ban ever reaches the statute books in the life of this Parliament, it will come into force just as the next General Election is looming.

Labour leaders know that and they also know there are many in the countryside who would happily break the law and go to prison in support of an activity that has been part of English, and Welsh, rural life for centuries.

Peter Luff, Mid-Worcestershire MP and a voice of reason among the tirades, pointed out a year ago, the last thing a Government wants in the run-up to an election is people being jailed for protesting their rights.

When the Poll Tax rioters turned on Maggie Thatcher's Government all those years ago they set a precedent that could come echoing back from the past.

As Simon Jenkins argued in a wide ranging article in The Times this week: "Hunting has a long standing cultural status and delivers a countryside which I regard as benign. Even if I regarded hunting as truly abhorrent, which I do not, it is far outside the spectrum of a minority wrongdoing that demands majority curtailment."

It is a view legal eagles will be keen to add wings to in the months, if not years, to come.