Will the assisted dying bill pass the Commons?

In the months before the general election, the Labour party had an internal debate about starting a ‘national conversation’ on assisted dying. Keir Starmer had promised Esther Rantzen, the veteran broadcaster with terminal cancer, that if elected he would hold a vote on it. Wes Streeting, in the health brief, argued that it might be the time to start a wider debate with the country on the thorny issue. However, he faced pushback from those in the shadow cabinet mindful of the fact there could be an election within months. Talking about death wasn’t exactly the feel-good change factor they were aiming for. ‘We didn’t want to become the death party,’ recalls a colleague.

Now, some in the party are wishing that the conversation had got under way sooner. Starmer has made good on his pledge to Rantzen: a vote to legalise assisted dying is due this month. But it’s not clear whether his government or party are convinced. ‘The politics has been off,’ says one Labour MP first elected this year. Backbencher Kim Leadbeater is using her private members’ bill to try to change the law so terminally ill patients with less than six months to live can opt for assisted dying. Technically it is a free vote – but given Starmer’s well-established position (he was one of the 118 MPs to back the 2015 effort for legalisation), the party believes it knows what the leadership would like to happen. ‘There will be soft whipping,’ predicts a cabinet minister.

There had been a sense that the bill should pass comfortably. The combination of Starmer’s support, the large Labour majority and an influx of new, modern MPs means this parliament looks very different to the one that rejected the idea in 2015.