In 1975, the then UK prime minister, Harold Wilson, stated: ‘A policy of euthanasia would be wholly abhorrent and there is absolutely no possibility of this government – or I believe of any government – ever giving it support.’ It is mildly ironic that this prediction has been disproved by a prime minister who views Wilson as the very model of a Labour leader.
Keir Starmer and his allies love to study the Wilson administrations, and have occasionally cited his line that the Labour Party is ‘a moral crusade or it is nothing’. But the assisted-suicide bill, which Starmer has covertly helped along since its very beginning, would have been Wilson’s nightmare. And the language used by some current Labour MPs about it – a vague, relentless drift of soundbites about compassion and autonomy – would have alarmed him with its superficiality.
