11 hours ago
Diane Abbott is both an old Leftie and a true Tory
Whenever MPs legislate some monstrosity, we are often assured that the debate reflected 'the House of Commons at its best', as though an odious bill is rendered less odious by everyone having observed parliamentary niceties.
Anyone seeking such solace after the approval of Kim Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will have a search on their hands. Friday's debate only confirmed what a wretched, incurious and insubstantial Parliament we have, with few exceptions.
One of them is Diane Abbott, the Mother of the House. She used her allotted time to make one final plea to her colleagues not to take the NHS into the killing business. It was a speech both practical and humanist but marked above all by scepticism. Abbott lodged no religious objection. She is not, she pointed out, implacably opposed to assisted suicide; she simply could not vote for such a dangerously flawed piece of legislation.
Abbott spoke a language Leadbeater displays no fluency in: doubt. She told MPs she 'would not put my life, or the life of anyone dear to me, in the hands of a panel of officials'.
As for those who asserted that assisted suicide would always be voluntary, she accused the Bill's supporters of failing to consider people primed to defer to authority, who would 'think that, because their doctor raises it with them at all, they are being guided in that direction'. Pro-suicide MPs might not 'take seriously' such concerns but 'anyone who knows how institutions work should be watchful of it'.
Here was a socialist warning against excessive deference to public sector bureaucrats and sainted NHS doctors. She showed an up-close understanding of the state's flaws that could only come from someone who has spent a career advocating state intervention. There is no conservative like an old Leftie.
The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington says she came into politics with hopes of being 'a voice for the voiceless'. Who, she asked her colleagues to imagine, 'could be more voiceless than somebody who is in their sick bed and believes that they are dying?'
We all probably know someone who doesn't want to make a fuss or be a burden on their loved ones. 'Within the family,' Abbott said, 'the most powerful coercion is silence: it is the failure to answer when a question is put'. How many people will fall silent and go along with what they imagine to be in the best interests of the people around them? We are about to find out.
What we can take a guess at is the demographic profile of those who will respond in this way. It will be older women, socialised to put their husband and children first. Women from minority religious and ethnic backgrounds, communities where it is traditional for men to do the talking and the decision-making and for women to be talked to and have final decisions presented to them.
Such people exist beyond the ken of a House of Commons populated by privileged graduate professionals, those who, in Abbott's words, 'have for the entirety of their adult life been confident in dealing with authority and institutions'. What about those who don't share that confidence? When you legislate with only Esther Rantzen in mind, you're going to overlook a lot of people.
Diane Abbott didn't just give a good speech. MPs give good speeches all the time. She took a stand at an hour of great moral failing and made the case for social conscience at a time of personal vanity. When a future Parliament comes to reckon with what this Parliament has done, it will look back with contempt upon a fit of callousness posing as compassion.
