In the space of a single week Parliament has made not one but two shattering changes to the moral fabric of British life. Today’s vote on Assisted Dying barrelled its way into law despite opposition by, in no particular order, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Pathologists, the former Chief Coroner, the National Council for Civil Liberties, the EHRC, the former President of the Family Court, and countless eating disorder and disability charities. But as Kim Leadbeater breezily responded, “people have different views”. Of course there was even less chance for “different views” to get a hearing in a rushed 45 minutes on Wednesday, when we legalised abortion up to the point of birth by the medium of a tacked on amendment to the Police and Crime bill.
This week was a snapshot of a parliament, a nation, and a culture in crisis. It is a moment that should be captured in our minds, and enter our collective memory. It is easy to forget, as we did following the end of lockdown, the emotional and spiritual atmosphere of politics in a time of emergency.
Watch the debate. Search the faces and the gestures, listen closely to the words that were spoken. Look beyond the specific arguments, and feel the pulse of feeling, sentiment and motivation racing underneath. The constant back-patting about the good-natured quality of the discussion, the strength and sincerity of feelings, the pure and decent motives of MPs, and cries of “parliament at its best” are not merely the self-congratulations they appear. It is the collective nervous tic of guilty men and women, who know they are mistrusted and hated by much of the public, and many of whom are unlikely to be addressing parliament in five years time. Labour MPs especially, most new to parliament and largely relegated to the backbenches by the weight of their numbers are feeling as if they have abandoned their values, and in turn left behind by popular opinion. These MPs are desperate to feel good about themselves, desperate to do something.
For them, autonomy is a matter of faith, and no choice can be truly bad if it is sanctified by the individual
This almost unseemly urgency buzzed at the edges of today’s vote. Those in favour continually stressed that doing nothing was worse than doing something, that the “status quo” was untenable. The bill was ideological displacement activity; a release valve for the neuroses of a governing class waking up to a country in crisis, and a public sector on the brink of collapse. Members of the public are infinitely more sanguine, and will openly say that we need assisted dying to save the health service. Indeed, this felt like the final oblations upon the altar of the household gods before the fall of the city to the barbarians, a last sacrifice made to the NHS. In this parting act of faith, politicians declared, without apparent irony, their absolute trust in the service to carry out assisted dying without chaos, abuse, or tragedy.
This was an act of political desperation by the most incompetent and confused parliament in British history. It was one last mad effort by the dying political class of a declining country. The speed with which they wish to provide assisted dying to the general public is only matched by the swiftness with which the public would like to assist the entire governing class depart political life.
The negativity leaked into the chamber. A nervous-looking Wera Hobhouse, Lib Dem MP for Bath, was “disturbed” by communications from constituents suggesting MPs were “either too stupid or careless” to be trusted with this issue. Other MPs speaking in support of the bill did little to disprove the allegations, with Luke Taylor suggesting that the vote was “not a big deal” and that taken alongside Tuesday’s abortion vote, it would “neatly bookend the week”.
Those speaking in opposition to the Bill were forced, by the parliamentary weight of opinion, to focus on its vast flaws, oversights and potential for abuse, rather than the principle involved. But behind these sometimes technical arguments the question of principle was never really absent. Critics of the bill pointed to the basic interconnectedness of individuals, and the moral hazards of freedom. Arguments that the sheer existence of such a choice will create new social expectations around death are unanswerable, and indeed were never once answered or addressed by proponents of assisted dying.
That is because critics, whether coming from an old-school socialist or conservative perspective, shared the basic insight that we are interdependent and liberty, though good, must be properly ordered to good ends. Those who support euthanasia are secular fundamentalists, like the puritans who banned alcohol and Christmas, drawing not from the common well of traditional wisdom, but from first principles unanswerable to material conditions. For them autonomy is a matter of faith, and no choice can be truly bad, if it is sanctified by the will of the individual. To deliver this absolutist creed, there must be just as much faith in liberal and technocratic institutions to deliver freedom, even for those, like the dying, elderly and vulnerable, whose freedom of thought and action is intrinsically impaired.
MPs who stood in opposition to this dangerous bill, like the father and mother of the house, Sir Edward Leigh and Diane Abbott, may sometimes have appeared to reflect an older generation, but they are also representatives of the future of British public life. The fearful and reactive politics of the spiritually homeless MPs who drove this measure through the Commons has no future whatsoever. Morally serious traditions, like conservatism and socialism, rooted in our distinct English culture and religious culture, will rise again in new forms fitted for the challenges of the current crisis of institutions and identity.
Deeper elements of our constitution, like the House of Lords which will be scrutinising and voting on this bill in the coming months, could yet intervene to stop this. The Lords could choose, in light of the massive expert opposition, and the lack of an absolute majority in the Commons, to take the extraordinary step of voting this bill down. I will be writing to Lords and Bishops in the coming months to urge this necessary and vital action to save vulnerable people from this disastrous law, and would invite readers to do the same. But even if this should become law, I have faith that future lawmakers, faced with the social and moral catastrophe of state-assisted death, will one day strike it down.
