On assisted suicide, Conservative Party leader Rishi Sunak has revealed (to nobody’s surprise) that he is “not against it in principle,” removing yet another possible dividing line with Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer. He appears to have sided with alleged ‘conservative’ commentators who believe the elderly and infirm should be “urged” to consider undergoing the lethal process.
The Tory prime minister suggested that “it’s just a question of having the safeguards in place and that’s where people have had questions in the past.” If Sunak’s comments—and, indeed, support from some senior Tories in the last parliamentary drive for legalisation in 2015—are anything to go by, it appears most likely that Britain’s elderly and infirm will be being pushed to consider assisted suicide within just a matter of years.
Even Nicola Sturgeon, the former leader of the hard-Left Scottish National Party, recognises that “with the best of intentions and the most carefully worded legislation, it will [still] be impossible to properly guarantee that no-one at the end of their life will feel a degree of pressure … a sense that it might be better for others for them not [to] be here.”
Nevertheles, Labour has already made it clear that if (as is most likely) it wins the general election, it will hold a parliamentary vote on assisted suicide. The Conservative manifesto, examined here, is expectedly evasive on the issue, simply saying that it will “respect the will of Parliament,” whatever it decides.
This alarms Phillip Blond, a leading figure in the “Red Tory” (economically left-leaning and culturally traditional) political movement, who noted that the “Conservatives are opposed to the state except when it encourages the needy to kill themselves and free us all from the burden of care.”
Blond described the movement to legalise assisted suicide as “the pernicious liberal death cult that has seized Canada [where there are claims about people with disabilities being pressured] and clearly has its advocates in the UK.”
Given that the Tories are suffering blow after blow after blow in the run-up to the July 4th general election, Sunak’s comments on what much of the media—including the more Right-wing newspapers—euphemistically calls “assisted dying” have inevitably prompted some to jibe at his current predicament. Musician and commentator Winston Marshall joked that “he’s taken the polls worse than I anticipated.” Writer Ben Sixsmith added: “Don’t be silly, Rishi. I know it’s been a tough time but you have the best years of your life ahead of you.”
