Whatever else Boris Johnson does as prime minister he’s certain not to repeal the ban on fox hunting.

There were large, angry protests when the ban was first introduced. If it was scrapped you can guarantee the protests would be 10 times larger and angrier.

So the ban is here to stay. Even leaving aside the ethics of it, trying to change the law would be completely impractical. Johnson is unpopular enough as it is, and nobody needs an excuse to join a demo against him.

I realise fox hunting has its supporters in Cumbria, and as a city-dweller I know little about it – though it’s worth pointing out that most people in the countryside are also against it.

But I’ve listened to all the arguments in favour and find none of them persuasive.

However I have another strong reason to oppose fox hunting. My best friend is a fox.

Most kids get a teddy bear as an infant, and even in adulthood they can retain a special attachment to it. Your cuddly toy has a status above any other childish plaything.

If you never had a teddy bear or similar you won’t understand this. But anyone who did have one will know. You’re likely to keep it for the rest of your life, even if it just sits in a chair in the spare room.

I didn’t have a teddy myself, but for my first birthday I got a soft Basil Brush. I don’t mind admitting, nearly 47 years later, that he’s still my best and oldest friend.

The idea of hunting him with a pack of dogs is horrific – or, as politicians seem to say these days, unacceptable.

Basil has never attacked any chickens or been in any trouble at all. But he’s the only animal I allow in my house.

I enforce a strict no pets, no children policy. But I have lived with animals in the past.

There haven’t been dogs, cats, snakes or giraffes. But one fellow tenant in a house where I once lived bought a hamster.

It spent every waking hour gnawing furiously on the bars at one end of the cage, then running to the other end and trying to break through there. It was sad to watch.

One day its owner left the cage door open and the animal vanished. I don’t know what became of it and imagined it got out of the house and might have been killed by a bird, a cat or a bigger rodent. But I was glad it was able to get a taste of freedom.

In another house where I rented a room years later someone bought a budgie. At first it did a lot of frantic flapping of its wings, equally distressed at being caged. Eventually its will seemed to be broken and it stopped.

Seeing these poor, frustrated, cruelly imprisoned animals put me off the idea of keeping a pet. And I wonder whether keeping one is ever justified.

I don’t count working animals in this. Humans domesticated animals in the late Stone Age and horses have been pulling wagons, oxen have been dragging ploughs and dogs have been herding sheep ever since.

Having them just as pets is a much more recent development. According to a survey two years ago, 90 per cent of pet owners think of their animal as a member of the family and 16 per cent even listed them as such in the 2011 census.

More troublingly, 24 per cent say they prefer their pet to their best friend, 12 per cent love their pet more than their partner and nine per cent say they love their pet more than their children.

This seems a bit sick, and those parents should probably be reported to the NSPCC.

Yet animal welfare is now a political issue. The hunting ban came among a whole set of measures from the ban on testing cosmetics on animals to next year’s outlawing of circuses which exploit them.

There are now an estimated three million vegetarians in the UK, and 600,000 vegans. Vegan numbers have quadrupled within four years.

Scientists are discovering that the emotional lives of animals are more complex than we once thought – and that even applies to the ones we regard as very “simple”, like goldfish.

Yet pet owners dictate where animals live, what they eat and even if they’re allowed to express natural behaviour, like reproducing.

Surely the logical consequence of knowing more about animals, and caring more about them, is to stop restricting them in this way?

If you really want one, I suggest you get a teddy bear – or a Basil Brush.