(Kathleen Stock / Unheard) – 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. CONTINUE