LABOUR Party strategists are planning to make the ban on hunting a key battleground in the coming General Election campaign in an attempt to win the votes of suburban animal-lovers.

Senior figures – including several ministers – want to use the Conservative pledge to repeal the Hunting Act to highlight how the Tories "have not changed".

They hope to create a rural dividing line, accusing the Tories of making the scrapping of the ban a key aim, while Labour's priorities are "protecting jobs, improving public services and cutting crime".

Officially, the Conservatives are committed only to giving MPs a free vote on the option to repeal the 2005 Act.

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But Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague went further in a speech to rural campaigners when he said it was a "bad law" which "should be repealed".

The Labour Party seized on the comments in an attempt to portray the Conservatives as traditional, landowning toffs.

It is a tactic which could work. Last month, a YouGov poll found that around 70 per cent of the public was against repealing the ban.

Some 59 per cent said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who backed hunting and 56 per cent said they associated the sport with a "nasty party" and not "compassionate Conservatives".

In last month's crunch by-election in Norwich – seen as a testing ground for General Election campaigning tactics for all the main parties – Labour distributed a leaflet bearing the blunt slogan: "Vote Labour… or the fox gets it!"

Lord Mandelson, seen as the key player in drawing up Labour's manifesto, also used a speech to demolish David Cameron's claim to be fronting the party of change.

He highlighted Conservative pledges to cut inheritance tax for the wealthy, adding: "Stop the press – they will repeal the Hunting Act.

"I don't believe that this goes and speaks to the interests of the British people.

"I think the Conservatives have got to do better."

Hundreds of key Labour figures and activists have joined online campaigns to oppose the repeal of the Act.

They include Labour candidates in the Westcountry, several ministers and Gordon Brown's parliamentary aide Anne Snelgrove.

Labour has little chance of making gains into the 18 Devon and Cornwall seats to be contested at the General Election – beyond the three it already holds.

But if it is able to damage the Conservatives' appeal sufficiently, it could benefit the anti-hunting Liberal Democrats who will battle it out with the Tories for the majority of the region's MPs.

Conservative sources admit they are "nervous" about the implications of the image of the fox as a "cuddly animal" being used in the run-up to the General Election. There are also fears that the party's pledge to authorise a targeted cull of badgers in the battle to control TB in cattle herds will also play into the hands of opponents who wish to portray them as bloodthirsty enemies of wildlife.

"We are expecting Labour to make more of the badger issue as we get closer to the election," said a Tory insider.

"It is difficult for us because we believe it is the right thing to do, but there are plenty of places where TB is not a big issue where it could play very badly for us."

Shadow farming minister Jim Paice recently conceded that the Tory Party did not have the rural vote sewn up yet – with many key contests being played out in constituencies in the countryside.

In anticipation of the hunting issue rising up the political agenda, hunt masters and their staff are being given media training.

The Countryside Alliance said the measure was designed to counter their image as being "arrogant, aloof and out of touch".