There’s no dignity in assisted dying

Oct 12, 2024 by

by Kathleen Stock, UnHerd:

Politicians are full of bogus compassion.

It was the childishness that pushed me over the edge. As news broke of the forthcoming parliamentary vote on assisted dying, a slew of statements from politicians emerged, each one more simplistically emotive and Manichean than the last.

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater — author of the private member’s bill to be introduced next week — called the current law “cruel and unjust”, as though talking about the deliberate withholding of pain relief, rather than a failure to legalise state-sponsored killing. Andrew Mitchell echoed the charge, decrying “the cruelty and suffering inflicted by the blanket ban”. Before long, claims about cruel laws had escalated to insinuations about cruel people, with Kit Malthouse describing himself as standing with the “millions of people who are on the side of compassion and humanity” — thereby making plain what he thought of anyone who disagreed with him.

At first, Baroness Ruth Davidson’s reaction seemed to win the prize for the most queasily syrup-laden, describing Leadbeater’s success at procuring a vote as “amazing news” and thanking her parliamentary colleague with online kisses. But then came Keir Starmer, with the air of someone who was confident listeners would understand the personal difficulty of saying no to a national treasure, revealing that he had “made a promise to Esther Rantzen… that we would provide time for a debate and a vote on assisted dying” and that he was “very pleased… to be able to make good on the promise”. To those previously unaware of a particularly close relationship between Starmer and Rantzen, the revelation that the former host of That’s Life! held such power at the heart of government came as a bit of a shock.

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