At some point in the not-too-distant future David Cameron will honour his promise to the blood sports lobby and hold a 'free vote' on the repeal of the 2004 Hunting Act.

No doubt there will be an expectation of Liberal Democrat compliance with the preferred option, with considerable pressure applied by the proponents of fox hunting to ensure that the correct outcome is delivered.

For without question one of the fundamental tenants of Tory Party philosophy is the unrestricted return of fox hunting and no posturing or delaying from their coalition partners will be allowed to prevent the inevitable.

Likewise the recent conversion of Tony Blair to the cause of fox hunting as the result of an epiphany – not exactly on the road to Damascus, but rather while holidaying on the island of Elba – will be seized upon by the Countryside Alliance as yet another reason to legalise the chasing of little bundles of russet fur in the name of 'liberty and livelihood'.

These encouraging signs of growing support for their cause will ensure that the collected rural freedom fighters from more than two hundred fox hunts around the country will re-double their efforts to ensure that the Hunting Act is repealed within the coming twelve months.

But while it would be naive to expect anything other than the ultimate repeal of this Act and the inevitable return of fox hunting as a legal pastime, the same should not necessarily be true of two other blood sports banned under the Act: hare coursing and stag hunting.

Whereas many people are ambiguous towards fox hunting, few have much stomach for either the hunting of red deer with hounds, or the pursuing of hares with greyhounds. In fact the December 2002 Labour anti-hunting bill proposed the complete abolition of hare coursing and stag hunting, while fox hunting would be subject to a registration system.

These hunts would have to apply to an independent tribunal and satisfy "tests of utility and cruelty", which meant they must prove the need to kill wild animals and that chasing them with hounds was the least cruel method which, with the benefit of hindsight, would have been the ideal solution to the issue. For these very reasons it may be conceivable that for Nick Clegg and his fifty-seven parliamentary colleagues the return of stag hunting and hare coursing could just be one repeal too far.

What is also noticeable is that the present push to repeal the Hunting Act almost exclusively revolves around the issue of fox hunting, with never a mention of the other blood sports involved. The reason is quite obvious: hare coursing offers not the slightest pretence as a form of control and the 150 to 200 deer killed each year by the three remaining stag hunt packs could easily be absorbed into the 1,000 to 1,200 culled annually by professional marksmen now employed by such bodies as the Forestry Commission and National Trust.

The bitter truth has to be faced that the Hunting Act 2004 has not worked, will never work, and will be repealed just as soon as Mr Cameron deems the time to be right.

The recent disclosure in Tony Blair's memoirs that the Act was never meant to work, that he sabotaged it to ensure that it didn't work and instructed the police not to enforce it must be evidence enough to all but the most self-deluded that the entire operation to get it onto the statute book was nothing more than a confidence trick perpetrated by New Labour.

Their aim was to maintain the illusion of abolition and give the appearance of honouring their manifesto pledge, while in reality allowing hunting's infrastructure to remain in place until such time as a future Tory Government repealed the Act, thus enshrining the right to kill for sport indefinitely. For the simple truth is that no future government of any colour will ever touch the issue again.

The time has surely come to face reality and accept that after nearly 100 years of campaigning the anti-blood sports lobby have won an essentially empty victory as a result of ignorance and betrayal from Labour politicians.

There are now two stark choices.

The three main defenders of the Act, the League Against Cruel Sports, International Fund for Animal Welfare and the RSPCA, can waste what few financial resources' remain in their coffers and attempt to fight a general repeal – or they can try to salvage something from this mess by encouraging the Liberal-Democrats to argue for a compromise.

If they take the first option then everything will be lost, while the second offers the chance that it might be possible to retain the abolition of hare coursing and stag hunting.

Only history will judge if they have the sense to make the right decision.