by Andrew Hopkins, Telegraph
While Kim Leadbeater urges colleagues to revive her failed bill, polling shows end-of-life legislation is not a priority for Britons
In the wake of Labour’s disastrous local election showing last month, the latest political forecasts point to the party shedding more than 80 per cent of its MPs. One of the factors underpinning Labour’s unpopularity is the perception that it has become dangerously detached from the country it governs.
That perception is easily explained. Britain faces the gravest combination of crises in a generation. Economic growth is sluggish. Energy costs remain punishingly high. Illegal migration unsurprisingly continues to dominate public concern. The NHS is buckling under pressure. Defence and national security anxieties are rising sharply in an increasingly unstable world. Families are poorer, councils are going bust, and public confidence in institutions is collapsing.
In trying to reverse Labour’s nosedive, Andy Burnham recognises the political folly of endlessly trying to relitigate Brexit after voters have decisively moved on. He understands that electorates eventually punish parties that appear obsessed with Westminster’s own ideological fixations while ignoring the pressures people actually live with.
Burnham’s political sagacity stands in stark contrast to Kim Leadbeater’s hubristic appeal to her colleagues to use the latest Private Members’ Bill ballot to revive her failed assisted suicide legislation.
The polling evidence is devastating for those trying to portray assisted suicide as some great democratic urgency. Recent Whitestone MRP research across every constituency in Great Britain found that assisted suicide did not rank among any of the top priorities voters wanted MPs to focus on in any seat surveyed. Not one.
That finding alone should stop Leadbeater’s campaign in its tracks.