Are poor children the new foxes? The answer could help decide the general election. To explain: a significant drag on the Conservative vote in 2017 was a group of viral issues almost completely ignored at Westminster which played out on Facebook and persuaded many voters not to back the Tories. Foxhunting was chief among them. Theresa May, in a single interview, confirmed she would maintain the party’s largely symbolic commitment to a free vote on ending the hunting ban. That restatement of policy got minimal conventional media coverage but reached millions of voters online, hampering the effort to cast May as a different sort of Tory, one in touch with Labour-inclined voters beyond the party’s southern heartlands.

Boris Johnson is about to attempt the