Tomorrow, Labour MP Lauren Edwards will reintroduce the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Commons for the third time in five years, after coming second in the Private Members’ Bill ballot. The previous attempt by Kim Leadbeater in 2025 was stymied in the Lords under the weight of 1,200 amendments from charities, experts, and abuse campaigners. Baroness Meacher’s 2021 bill also failed. Under existing parliamentary procedure, if the bill passes the Commons again, it cannot be blocked in the Lords.
The push for assisted dying has become the most egregious symbol of Keir Starmer’s broken promises, according to critics. The bill was never Labour policy; it was brought as a Private Members’ Bill with what one report calls “the transparent connivance of government”. It followed a pattern of U-turns that has defined Starmer’s premiership. A political obituary in the New Statesman describes how Starmer arrived in politics unprepared for the gregarious, treacherous world of dealmaking and personal relationships. “Cautious in demeanour and lawyerly in language, he had entered a frenzied competition of persuasion, argument and hyperbole.” Accustomed to being taken at his word in court, he found himself in a “raucous, jeering environment” where many saw him as a compulsive liar.
“Labour MP Lauren Edwards will reintroduce the Assisted Dying Bill for a third time, highlighting Starmer’s broken promises.”
Starmer’s decisions have attracted widespread hatred: the winter fuel cut, the Chagos deal, and failure to properly fund defence. He accepted cash to buy spectacles and clothes, treated colleagues icily, and sacked them not face-to-face. Yet the obituary notes he was not as reckless as Liz Truss or Boris Johnson. “He hadn’t, after all, like Liz Truss, brought Britain near to market meltdown. He hadn’t held parties in Downing Street when the rest of the country was in lockdown.”
Nonetheless, voters are experiencing sellers’ remorse. One commentator compared the relation between British voters and their government to being kidnapped in a taxi: “You vote again and again for sensible taxation and functioning borders and public services, but every time you go outside there’s just the same Labour MP chasing you with a syringe.” For Starmer, the feeling is mutual. The obituary ends with him padding round Chequers, knowing that so many people now despise him – a solitary, guarded man who never truly understood the game he entered.