A free vote carries the sense of MPs set free to vote according to their consciences, or at least their personal tastes. The picture presented by the hunting ban is of Labour MPs, in the great majority, lurching from the tyranny of the whip into the new tyranny of correctness. Unable to prevent their government from being insensitive to the disabled, or to single parents, or subsidised tenants, or a host of other interest-groups they would like to care for, they can at least satisfy their ideological roots by uniting to stop the hunter and, as they imagine, protect the fox. Their unity, however, is more important than their conscience. Conventional progressive wisdom now dictates that hunting with dogs is an atrocity.
Heterodoxy is therefore in limited supply.
The real free vote will be cast, at personal peril, by any Labour MP who declines to follow the righteous herd. Let us hope there are some of them left. But since the purpose of Mr Blair suddenly re-launching the hunt ban was to prove that here was an issue to unite the restive factions in his party, don't bet on it. Hunting is not, in all its aspects, pleasant. But then nor is fishing.