The world of politics can sometimes be a matter of life and death, as well as being about promoting different versions of a standard of living.
A movement, entitled “Zero seats” has emerged in the <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/catholic-union-launches-election-guide-as-polls-predict-strong-catholic-turnout-on-4-july/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">build-up to the UK General Election on 4 July</mark></a>. It contemplates the complete political demise of the Conservative Party. The movement is driven by frustrated voters, who believe that the Tories have sold them out for decades by masquerading as Conservatives, but actually governing as liberal democrats.
Rishi Sunak as serving Prime Minister and the leader of the Conservative Party is, understandably, worried about the possibility of a complete wipe-out of his party.
Of course, political parties attempt to frighten or bribe their way into power at election time. That is in the nature of the complexities of the relationship between politicians and the public. So it was always going to be interesting to see what threat or bribe each party might reach for to achieve power – or to soften the crash landing.
Catholics can rightly be profoundly alarmed by <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/uk-prime-minister-indicates-he-wouldnt-oppose-assisted-dying/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Sunak’s recent bribe of choice</mark></a>: assisted suicide.
Speaking to reporters in Italy where he was attending the G7 summit, Mr Sunak said:
“The manifesto has language on this which is very clear: we will support what Parliament does – these matters are always an issue of conscience, of course – if Parliament wants to decide they want to facilitate it.”
He went on: “I’m not opposed to it, in principle, and it’s a question of making sure the safeguards are in place and are effective. That’s always been the conversation and the debate in the past and that’s where people have had questions in the past.”
In the annals of political history, the Conservative Party has been a ruthlessly efficient machine when it comes to keeping hold of power. It has been astonishingly successful.
In the world of political ambition, it has shown itself single-eyed and Machiavellian when it comes to making sacrifices or changes of direction in order to keep power.
When it comes to triple locks on pensions or exempting private schools from VAT, however, these are not matters of life or death. But euthanasia, or assisted suicide, <em>is</em>, by definition.
What is being contemplated, though, is not so much the death of the competent wealthy bourgeoisie seeking to exercise control over their own destinies – <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/southwark-archbishop-catholics-must-fight-aggressive-euthanasia-suicide-campaign/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">as the cheerleading celebrities and supportive mainstream media try to portray the matter</mark></a> – but the tragic death of the weakest and most vulnerable.
Of course, those of us who fear suffering incontinence and brain death are terrified of the process of dying. And it is no wonder, in a society that has become so radically secularised and frighteningly superficial.
Competent, middle-class people who have been able to buy their way to comfort and convenience, are understandably terrified by the threat of death, and particularly by the possibility of suffering. So they have been demanding a change in the law to provide the right to assisted suicide.
And at the very last minute of his premiership, Rishi Sunak has spotted an opportunity to reduce the prospect of his political death by facilitating the death of others.
We should be neither surprised nor fooled. Catholics, and other thoughtful people, know that assisted suicide is not what it presents itself to be.
It is true that, at one level, it appears to be a ticket into the unknown with a minimum of fuss and trouble. But this is where the unintended consequences come in. This is the point at which your philosophy of human nature, clarifies, or obscures, the complexities of our moral incompetence.
Rishi Sunak makes the caveat of promising that "safeguards" would be in place in order to counter the slippery slope argument. But the force of the slippery slope argument is that it’s almost impossible to legislate for the complexities of human vulnerability and of social and economic pressures.
Critics of assisted suicide have been saying for some time that there are <em>no safeguards</em> that can guarantee that their principles won’t be misused. It has come as no surprise to critics that in Canada, which is at the forefront of the practice of assisted suicide, there has been an exponential increase in deaths by that route.
With Canadian law now permitting assisted suicide with increasing degrees of latitude, the figures show an astonishing escalation in its use. Canada saw a <a href="https://righttolife.org.uk/news/canada-sees-32-increase-in-assisted-suicide-and-euthanasia-in-one-year"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">32 per cent increase in assisted suicide and euthanasia</mark></a> in 2022 alone.
In one instance, a Canadian veteran claimed she had been offered MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) in response to her request for the provision of a wheelchair lift or ramp at her house. Clearly, it was cheaper to let her do away with herself, then to provide the amenity, if she could be so persuaded.
In another, the family of Alan Nichols protested when they found he had died by euthanasia, with “hearing loss” listed as the sole criterion. The family reported it to police and health authorities – but neither saw cause to investigate further. The RCMP told the family that Nichols “met the criteria” for assisted death.
Nearer to home, the newspapers reported an announcement from a physically healthy young Dutch woman Zoraya ter Beek. She was suffering from depression and had been diagnosed as having autism with a borderline personality disorder. She hit the headlines earlier this year by explaining that she planned to be euthanised in a few weeks’ time, with the help of the State. She qualified to be put to death by the government under Dutch law – as she was: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/zoraya-ter-beek-deserved-doctors-who-cherished-her-life-as-precious/?swcfpc=1">euthanised at the age of 29 years old</a>.
The <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-terrible-truth-about-assisted-dying-lessons-from-canada-and-australia/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">examples of abuse that have emerged</mark></a> should stop Rishi Sunak in his tracks.
Political commentators have suggested that the Conservative Party has a death wish. It certainly looks as though it may very well not survive the anger of a frustrated electorate.
The tragedy is that as a last-minute reflex, it’s going to try to engineer its political survival by legislating to implement the encouraged death wishes of vulnerable people whose survival may hinge upon someone not wanting to build a wheelchair ramp, or a doctor not wanting to help with hearing aids, or a community impatient with depression.
Political parties do not attract the same moral protection as human beings created in God’s own image. In the face of their grasping at surviving at the expense of the most socially vulnerable through euthanasia and assisted suicide, the political suicide of Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party might not be such a tragedy after all.
<em>Photo: Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announces from outside 10 Downing Street that July 4 is the date of the UK's next general election, London, UK, 22 May 2024. (Photo by BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images.)</em>
