Hallelujah, It’s About Time: MPs Defy the Clueless and Back Dignity in Dying
Despite Angela Rayner’s eye-rolls and Wes Streeting’s screwdriver politics, Parliament finally musters the courage to grant the terminally ill a merciful choice. Now, implement it properly.
Precisely fifteen minutes ago, I found myself gawping at the news like a half-baked trout, disbelief dripping from every pore. MPs, bless their accident-prone little hearts, have voted to legalise assisted dying. I read the headline twice, poked my phone to see if it was a prank and then checked I hadn’t accidentally swallowed my old morphine stash. But no. It’s real. England, the land that once banned cheese rolls during Lent and t-bone steaks, has finally stumbled upon an ounce of mercy for the terminally ill.
Despite the enthusiastic efforts of our Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, a woman whose qualifications for the job appear to extend to an eye-rolling mastery of political empty promises; MPs mustered enough spine to pass Kim Leadbeater’s ‘End of Life’ Bill. Granted, Angela and her sidekick Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary who still thinks the NHS is like squeaky door you can fix with a screwdriver and a quick kick; both voted against it. Predictably. But the grown-ups in the room outnumbered them by a close 23 votes. Miracles do happen.
If you’ve never sat beside a loved one gasping through the final innings, let me paint you a picture. Imagine someone strapped to a bed, a shrivelled husk of who they were, begging you with cracked lips to ‘make it stop’. Now imagine you, helpless, lying to their face that tomorrow might be better. That’s the tragic encore countless families endure while bureaucrats argue about ‘ethical frameworks’ from the comfort of their subsidised lunch canteen.
So yes, to the weeping naysayers clutching rosary beads and ‘slippery slope’ horror stories from Oregon! I see you, I hear you, but I’d rather listen to the dying themselves, thank you very much. Let’s be honest; this law isn’t about making life cheaper. It’s about giving dignity back to people whose days are spent trying to remember which side-effect hurts more.
Don’t misunderstand me; I’m under no illusion that Wes and Angela will now roll up their sleeves and implement this with sparkling efficiency. These are, after all, the same minds who think NHS waiting lists can be tamed with a cheery press release and an underpaid junior doctor on their fifth night shift. If history has taught us anything, it’s that my veins will find a working cannula before this law finds royal assent.
However, this is still a win. A big, messy, imperfect, legislative splodge of common sense that says to every terminally ill soul, we hear you. It won’t bring back my family member who needed this option too late. It won’t erase decades of suffering for those we’ve already lost. But it might just spare the next person the slow-motion agony of being kept alive when they’d rather slip away peacefully, Netflix switched off, morphine drip humming, family’s hands held tight.
So to those MPs who ignored the bleating and voted ‘yes’! Thank you. Genuinely. From one human who’s been to death’s doorstep and come back covered in bruises; you did good.
Now Angela and Wes, you energetic puddles of ‘could do better’; the nation is watching. Less dithering, more delivering. Prove you can read more than the party script. Prove you have an ounce of compassion for people who have fought harder than most politicians ever will.
To everyone else, keep fighting, keep campaigning, keep speaking for those too broken to shout for themselves. We owe it to every patient stuck in an endless treatment cycle! Like a hamster on a radioactive wheel, to promise that when the fight is truly over; they can choose a gentle farewell.
Today we got a little closer to that promise. Now let’s drag it across the finish line before another batch of clueless ministers has a bright idea to bin it.
Raise a glass. They can take our taxes, but by God, they shouldn’t take our right to decide when enough is enough.
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Chris Geiger, Author of The Cancer Survivors Club.
Daily Dose of Disbelief!
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