Miriam Cates is a presenter on GBNews and the former MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge.
It is now just over a week since Keir Starmer was paid a visit by Labour Cabinet colleagues and told that his time was finally up.
But Starmer is not the only Labour MP requiring a visit from the proverbial men in grey suits. After finishing with the Prime Minister, their attention ought to turn to Kim Leadbeater, the MP to whom Starmer entrusted his promise to Esther Rantzen before the General Election to bring forward a Bill to legalise assisted suicide. In many ways, the fall of this Bill in the last parliamentary session encapsulated Starmer’s premiership: a failed Bill that divided his party.
Tapping Leadbeater on the shoulder to tell her the game is up may attract less attention than political grandees informing a sitting Prime Minister that his time is up, but the stakes are just as high – assisted suicide would irreversibly change the role of the NHS, our attitude towards suicide prevention and how we encounter death as a society.
One might think the assisted suicide Bill would automatically fall with Starmer, given his well-documented patronage of it – and it may well do so. Andy Burnham would be wise to steer clear. However, Leadbeater has become a cheerleader for the cause she was handed and successfully persuaded her colleague Lauren Edwards to revive the Bill via the recent Private Members’ Bill ballot.
In some ways, Kim Leadbeater is a victim of Starmer – handed a hospital pass by a Prime Minister unwilling to take responsibility for a pet project widely opposed by professionals who care for people at the end of life.
In that respect, it is possible to feel pity for Leadbeater. There is no public record of her ever expressing support for assisted suicide prior to taking on her Bill, but having chosen to do so, she went all-in with unrelenting commitment, investing over 18 months in an attempted social change to which she put her name.
When someone takes on an issue with such high stakes, it requires them to become a zealot. Zealots rarely shift and can easily become deaf to legitimate concerns, as Leadbeater did throughout her Bill’s passage in both Houses of Parliament. As misguided as she may be, she sees her cause as a moral crusade, and to admit defeat now after all the effort would be very difficult.
And yet, admit defeat she must. Hence the need for the men – and women – in grey suits and red rosettes to give Leadbeater and Edwards a reality dose as they did for Starmer – any proposed reset under Andy Burnham would be hamstrung if Leadbeater’s Bill, under its new sponsor, is allowed to pass at Second Reading, and so dominate the rest of the parliamentary session.
At Third Reading of Leadbeater’s Bill, 58 per cent of voting Labour MPs supported Leadbeater’s Bill. 42 per cent opposed it. MPs’ inboxes were flooded for months with emotive correspondence from constituents on both sides of the debate. Few would relish a repeat, and few issues would be as divisive to the Labour Parliamentary Party – and therefore unconducive to the stable government the country now needs – than a parliamentary rematch on such a profoundly complex issue.
Leadbeater’s response to all this relies on a myth being widely peddled that a handful of peers scurrilously blocked her Bill in the Lords, so it must be revived. The reality is that over 140 peers, including peers appointed to the Lords for their expertise in palliative care, the NHS, law, psychiatry and disability, actively opposed the Bill and the Lords gave the Bill the kind of scrutiny Leadbeater studiously avoided in the Commons.
Peers even established their own Select Committee, which heard evidence from experts representing medical Royal Colleges, relevant professional bodies and vulnerable groups who lined up one by one to pronounce their strong opposition to Leadbeater’s Bill – a Bill that will have to be reintroduced in the same flawed form for Leadbeater to succeed in her desire to now ram the Bill through using the Parliament Acts.
After Andy Burnham’s victory in Makerfield, Starmer had to accept reality because the facts on the ground made it impossible for him to stay: he no longer held the confidence of the majority of his party. When the political undertakers in grey suits read Leadbeater the last rites for her Bill, they would be well-advised to spell out similar facts to her – her Bill would not only divide but has also likely lost its majority support in the Commons.
The facts on the ground have also changed for Leadbeater. Many new intake MPs voted for assisted suicide early on because it enjoyed Starmer’s patronage. But Starmer has departed, freeing emboldened MPs from the herd.
Moreover, since MPs last voted narrowly for the Bill, a similar Bill in Scotland has been decisively defeated. Labour MPs will have noted how 85 per cent of their colleagues north of the border decided that supporting such legislation was inconsistent with Labour values and a concern for the vulnerable. The controversial desire to use the Parliament Acts – never previously used for a Private Members’ Bill – to force through a flawed Bill will also likely dissuade wavering MPs.
In this context, facing likely defeat and provoking certain division, it would be madness for Lauren Edwards’ new Bill to pass. It is time a delegation paid Ms Leadbeater and Ms Edwards a visit and put their Bill out of its misery. Andy Burnham would breathe a sigh of relief.