And so begins the buyers' remorse for assisted suicide, with the pitiful excuse that "Second Reading is a just a vote on the principle", which it is not. 23 Conservative and three Reform UK MPs voted for this Bill, while three Conservatives abstained. If they had all voted against it, then there would have been a tie, 304 votes each, and by convention the Speaker's casting vote is for the status quo.
More Labour than Conservative MPs voted against this Bill, but the 23 Conservatives who voted for it were decidedly high status, including all three of that party's most recent Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, among other grandees. The Health Secretary voted against, but the last Conservative Health Secretary voted in favour. The Tory Deep State is right behind this.
As for Reform, at 60 per cent, its support for assisted suicide was slightly higher than Labour's, and included both the Deputy Leader and the Chief Whip. The Labour Chief Whip also voted for it, but the Labour Deputy Leader voted against. Labour MPs with undeniably working-class backgrounds or below were far more inclined to oppose this, as were those sitting for less well-off constituencies. Across parties, but heavily concentrated on the Labour benches as they are, MPs from visible ethnic minorities were especially likely to be opposed, and black women were most especially so, with Diane Abbott, Florence Eshalomi, Paulette Hamilton and Dawn Butler making four of the most powerful speeches against. The Liberal Democrats voted overwhelmingly in favour, and the Greens unanimously so, but all five of the Independent Alliance, and all but one of the seven MPs who lost the Labour Whip over the two-child benefit cap, joined most of Labour's remaining Left in the No Lobby.
Some people sincerely cannot imagine that egregious abuses might ever happen to them. But things could not look more different to those who had lived their whole lives being silenced, ignored, marginalised, ridiculed, discriminated against, and not uncommonly a lot worse. MPs from comfortable antecedents, but who nevertheless represented such communities in numbers too predominant locally to be able to brush aside, also have a very different perspective from those whose constituencies contained either only "a few", or few enough to be able to pretend that that was the case.
But what of the Conservative votes against? Again, Kemi Badenoch (who had previously professed herself in favour of the principle), Saqib Bhatti, Suella Braverman, James Cleverly, Claire Countinho, Helen Grant, Alan Mak, Gagan Mohindra, Ben Obese-Jecty, Priti Patel and Shivani Raja would have had their own reasons. But while someone like Danny Kruger may have been motivated by faith, as some Labour and other MPs also were, that is extremely unusual in upper-middle-class white people these days.
Rural areas are not bastions of social conservatism in this sense, if at all. Sitting for the deep countryside did not preclude support for this Bill on the part of many Labour MPs and very many Lib Dems. Half of the Greens' seats are there. As are all of Plaid Cymru's, and three of that party's four MPs voted for this. For all Nigel Farage's personal vote, if Reform's overwhelming support had not visibly blotted its copybook with Donald Trump, then a good many Conservative MPs would conclude that they, too, were off the hook.
Even Ann Widdecombe, who as Reform's only Privy Counsellor would probably be its first Peer by the time that this Bill reached the House of Lords, has taken to the airwaves to opine that she would not have been opposed to this measure if only it had had the right "safeguards", a subjective judgement on the part of each individual parliamentarian. Farage has said that he might change his mind if Britain left the European Convention on Human Rights, thereby establishing that he might change his mind.
All the talk is of a rough ride at committee stage, leading to the possibility of rejection at Third Reading because initially supportive, mostly Labour MPs' concerns had not been allayed. But I have an awful suspicion that everyone is looking in the wrong place.
This could do Reform a lot of harm.
ReplyDeleteThat depends who you think voted for it, or might consider doing so.
DeleteAll three recent Conservative PMs opposed this: https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/27/three-former-conservative-prime-ministers-oppose-assisted-dying-bill
ReplyDeleteWhen this was last brought before Parliament when there was a Conservative majority it was heavily defeated. This time, again, the majority of Conservative MPs voted against but most Labour MPs voted for, and this time they have the parliamentary majority, so of course it passed.
It’s yet another example of how Peter Hitchens said, people who thought the last election wasn’t a real choice were utterly wrong.
A few months into a Labour government and we already have assisted suicide, huge tax hikes, Red Ed’s mad ban on drilling North Sea oil and gas fields, spiteful tax raids on Tory voting farmers, private school pupils and private sector employers, thousands of criminals freed early onto the streets, the abolition of the last independent voices in the House of Lords, the unprecedented scrapping of a law passed by Parliament to protect free speech in Universities, and the sellout of British Overseas Territories to a Chinese ally.
And Labour’s only getting started.
I stopped reading after the first howler. The most recent Conservative Prime Minister voted for it, as part of a rollcall of the party's royalty in the Aye Lobby.
DeleteNobody remembers Sunak-Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss opposed it. The same bill was easily defeated when the Conservatives were last in office…
ReplyDeleteSunak is the one who is still in the Commons, with a vote, which he used. Most of that Golden Circle used it in the same way, just as David Cameron has had a "change of mind". And they are the people who permanently run that party. Ask Liz Truss.
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