Hunt supporters demanded the ban on fox hunting be scrapped yesterday, after Tony Blair admitted he opposed the law that caused chaos in the countryside.

In his memoirs, A Journey, published yesterday, the former prime minister admits he tried to sabotage his own legislation.

He reveals introducing the fox hunting ban was one of the two domestic laws he most regrets (the other was the Freedom of Information Act) – and the one that gave him the most grief.

Leaders of West hunts said yesterday the revelations "vindicated all their arguments".

His candid admission brought condemnation from campaigners on both sides of the controversy as they disputed his claim that hunting is still "not quite banned".

His book tells how Prince Charles lobbied him on the issue, and reveals Mr Blair effectively told the police not to enforce the ban.

In a section of the book called Managing Crises, he says: "The passions aroused by the issue were phenomenal.

"If I'd proposed solving the pension problem by compulsory euthanasia for every fifth pensioner I'd have got less trouble for it."

Mr Blair admits he was ignorant about hunting, and his advisors told him it was an issue of trust after he made "a fatal mistake" by raising expectations of a ban on TV.

"The moment I did so, I was defined. And so trapped. By the end of it, I felt like the damn fox."

President George Bush, after asking why there were hunt supporters following him around, said: "Whatever did you do that for, man?"

During one of his notorious summer holidays, on "the beautiful island of Elba", he met the mistress of a hunt near Oxford. The ex-PM says: "She took me calmly and persuasively through what they did, the jobs that were dependant on it, the social contribution of keeping the hunt and the social consequence of banning it, and did it with an effect that completely convinced me."

He was determined to "slip out of this" and "in the end, there was a masterly British compromise – it was banned in such a way that, providing certain steps are taken to avoid cruelty when the fox is killed, it isn't banned".

Mr Blair says Home Office Minister Hazel Blears asked if he wanted the ban policed vigorously and hints he said no.

And he reveals Prince Charles thought the ban was absurd and that he won a bet with the heir to the throne.

"The wager was that after I left office, people would still be hunting. 'But how, if you're going to ban it?' he asked. 'I don't know, but I will find a way,' I replied."

Chris Adams, chairman of the Cotswold Hunt, said it was interesting Mr Blair had been so blunt. He told the Western Daily Press: "It vindicates all our arguments that we put before the ban, and I think it is obvious it was a political expedient from Blair's position.

"The reason people were so upset about it was because we realised it was all a political move and we were suffering big-time because of it

"If there is an upside it is that people know more about the sport now – it has dragged us into the 21st century."

The Countryside Alliance accused Mr Blair both of rewriting history, and sabotaging efforts to agree a workable licensing regime.

The law as passed does not allow hunting to continue, and is not a masterly British compromise, the alliance said.

Its view was : "If there is any compromise, it is in the enforcement of the law, and Blair can claim no credit for passing an Act which is both so illogical and so reviled by every single person that it is meant to affect, that the police take the view that they have better things to do than try to make it work."

The League Against Cruel Sports said it was "alarming in the extreme" the PM had not encouraged the enforcement of the Hunting Act.

Chairman John Cooper said: "He is sailing perilously close to perverting the course of justice."

League chief executive Douglas Batchelor said there had been at least 138 convictions under the Act since its introduction, an average of one every fortnight.

North Wiltshire Conservative MP James Gray, who was heavily involved in the campaign against the ban, said: "He was Prime Minister, and under him 700 hours of Parliamentary time were wasted.

"This is the man who took us to war in Iraq and he says he could not get around a mistake he made in a TV programme. It is crazy."