Assisted dying

It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in Covent Garden and we are all learning how to kill ourselves. The venue is a nondescript community centre in Stukeley Street. It usually hosts activities for children, so there are crayon drawings and anti-bullying posters on the noticeboard. Today, however, a purple pop-up banner displays the Exit International logo and its mission statement: ‘A peaceful death is everybody’s right.’ Admittance to the four-hour workshop costs £50 and is reserved for those over the age of 50 and the seriously ill. The company collects around the tea hatch, everyone fanning themselves with their copies of the Exit International magazine, Deliverance. There are 80 or so men and women, grey-haired and crepe-soled.

Well, of course the Assisted Dying Bill failed. It mattered not a jot that an overwhelming majority of public opinion urged its success; it was always going to fail and the only surprising thing is that anybody is surprised. I’ll bet my teeth on a few more certainties, too. Last week the required 200,000 people put down their spliffs long enough to sign a petition in favour of decriminalising cannabis and thus, in October, the matter will be debated by MPs. Proponents, however, really should not bother — they will lose, regardless.

The debate currently taking place on the second reading of the Assisted Dying Bill in the Commons is one of the best ones MPs have conducted in recent times. It is full of vehement, passionate disagreement. But it is also well-informed, not absurdly tribal or rowdy, and a debate that focuses on scrutinising the legislation itself, rather than slinging mud at the other side's motives. Here are the best speeches so far, as they come - on both sides of the debate.

As Charles Killick Millard conceded, there was an issue about grandparents. Millard, the leading figure of the Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society back in the 30s, realised that people might cajole their elderly relatives into choosing death. But this had its benefits, he argued: ‘It would make querulous old folk more careful how they dilated upon their aches and pains.’ Havelock Ellis, one of the Society’s celebrity supporters, was blunter: he expressed his annoyance that ‘we are terribly afraid of killing those citizens whom we all regard as financially unpromising.' There is a callousness in those remarks which resurfaces whenever assisted suicide is put forward.

The Assisted Dying Bill will return to the Commons and Lords in the near future – are we prepared for the consequences? On the latest View from 22 podcast, Douglas Murray debates this week’s cover feature with Lord Falconer, the former Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor who has been a key proponent of the bill. Are there lessons to be learnt from euthanasia legislation in Holland, Belgium and Oregon? What impact will the law have on the mentalities of older people? And are there enough provisions in the bill to stop assisted dying becoming a ‘slippery slope’? Isabel Hardman and James Cleverly, the Conservative MP for Braintree, also discuss the 2015 intake of Conservative MPs and how they differ from previous generations.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_17_July_2014_v4.mp3" title="Charles Moore and Fraser Nelson discuss the reshuffle" startat=851] Listen [/audioplayer]This must be the worst reshuffle since Mrs Thatcher demoted Geoffrey Howe in 1989. Unlike that one, its errors are unforced. This year, David Cameron had established a surprisingly strong position as the leader whose unpopular but necessary policies were starting to work. He and his team seemed steadier and more able than their opponents. Now he has thrown that away with changes so large that he looks as if he disrespects what he has achieved.

There is something mildly unexpected about religious groups’ hostility to euthanasia. After all, in the ancient world one of the major differences between e.g. Christians and pagans was that Christians were renowned for welcoming, indeed rejoicing at, death. Pagans found this incomprehensible. Not that pagans feared the afterlife. Although, in the absence of sacred texts, there were no received views on the matter, Greeks reckoned that if the gods were displeased with you, they would demonstrate it in this life rather than the next.

There is, I realise, no perfect, neutral way of describing ‘assisted dying’, the substance of Lord Falconer’s bill which comes up for its second reading on 18th July. ‘Right to die’ is a bit tricky; dying is one of those rights that are thrust upon us without our even asking. It’s part of the human condition; just wait long enough, and it’s yours. And as Jenny McCartney eloquently makes clear in her piece on the subject, it’s actually assisted suicide — the assistance being provided by a doctor – or if you prefer, killing by request.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_3_July_2014_v4.mp3" title="James Harris and Madeleine Teahan discuss the Assisted Dying Bill" startat=874] Listen [/audioplayer]If you were around in the days when the US series M*A*S*H was a regular feature on British television, its sing-song theme is probably still lodged in your memory: ‘Suicide is painless/ It brings on many changes/ And I can take or leave it if I please’. However catchy, it is broadly untrue. The human life force is stubborn, and it takes a visceral struggle to extinguish it.