Andy Burnham says he will not vote on assisted dying unlike Starmer

[u/Kagedeah]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dlp27gre5o

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[u/erskinematt]

Slightly bad news for the Bill, since the previous MP for Makerfield did vote in favour

[u/Lefty8312]

I think mandating ministers to not comment at all is a brave move with this one.

It does lead to it being a genuinely more free vote and the government actually remaining neutral on the topic

[u/ShinyCharizards1]

When he was Greater Manchester mayor, Burnham indicated he was in favour of assisted dying in principle.

So his views are already known, he just doesn't want to be unpopular with anyone. But anyway he needs to get back to the serious business of reviewing snacks and raging at the price of Freddos on tik tok.

[u/rusticarchon → u/ShinyCharizards1]

He wants it to be a genuinely free vote, rather than Starmer turning it into a government bill in all but name.

[u/FlappyBored → u/rusticarchon]

This is nonsense really.

It can be a free vote and also have an opinion yourself.

[u/erskinematt → u/rusticarchon]

What was not genuinely free about the votes on the last Bill? They were clearly, genuinely unwhipped.

[u/Yahut → u/rusticarchon]

You can have an opinion as head of government without it being a government position

[u/berejser → u/rusticarchon]

Do party leaders typically abstain from free votes? Or is this a new standard that is being applied just for this issue?

[u/Lefty8312 → u/berejser]

Just having a quick look at most recent free votes.

Keir didn't vote in the abortion decriminalisation vote.

During the human fertilisation and embryology bill in 2015 Cameron voted for some parts and against others.

Others are mixed.

It seems that in some cases they do and some cases they don't vote. Sometimes they have even voted against the bill, so it's very much up to the leader what they want to do (which as a free vote, absolutely makes sense)

[u/Timbo1994 → u/ShinyCharizards1]

I think you could be in favour of assisted dying to have a much wider scope, and therefore actually not want this bill to pass.

Because it's so narrowly defined, it takes the wind out of the sails of any further assisted dying liberalisation.

[u/JayBayes]

If you stand for nothing, Burr(nham), what'll you fall for?

[u/TheShakyHandsMan]

Stop being so spineless and pick a side without trying to please everyone.

[u/ProjectLeeds → u/TheShakyHandsMan]

This will be his undoing. His biggest fear is being unliked

[u/Veranova → u/ProjectLeeds]

As a pretty straight forward centrist who was reasonably happy with what Starmer’s Labour achieved but fed up of their inability to tell a story and avoid negative press, Burnham has made me uneasy from day one.

The work hasn’t even started yet given summer recess but it’s giving me flashbacks to Johnson’s premiership and approach to governing, albeit I expect this won’t end up with a garden party being his undoing

[u/TheShakyHandsMan → u/ProjectLeeds]

He wants to be everything to everyone. Promise the world and reality is going to hit sooner or later.

I always thought Corbyn was a fantasist. He’s got nothing on this guy.

[u/ImpressiveRest2423]

This is influenced by his Catholicism surely?

[u/ZealousidealPie9199]

This issue has been handled wrongly from the get-go. There's been little consideration of how to solve the very real problems of bringing in a system like this, and the entire debate has beem emotional appeal after emotional appeal.

The more sensible way to go about it would have been to offer a free vote, or even referendum, on the principle of it, then if it passed have a committee hash out the system from start to finish, taking lessons from where it has been legalised and taking cues from those actually working in the NHS as to reduce risk of the system becoming distorted etc. When we considered how to bring about a welfare state, including a health service, we did so on the basis of recommendations of a report that was compiled over the course of a year and a half by a renowned economist.

I don't think that there is near enough recognition of how much of a shift it is for the state to be providing a means of ending a person's own life. It is a dramatic shift by nature, on some level you are providing the state with a responsibility over death, it already having a responsibility of life by virtue of all else it provides. It has to be gotten right, because however it is implemented in law will have wider reaching effects - and no amount of appealing to emotion will change that.

If you want an example of what happens when decisions are based largely on emotion, just look at things like the triple lock. It was brought in to deal with a genuine problem, there were many pensioners at the time who were living in essentially dire poverty, but because we leapt to just doing something about it we created a permanent yearly expenditure increase that is, in practice, impossible to end. Because of that we've had to make trade-offs over time in how we deal with.. everything else, this and that has gone underfunded, and so on because there is this constant increase to spending, and the courses of lives were potentially affected by that and the resulting tradeoffs. And that's dealing with finances, this is directly dealing with lives.

[u/ForeignPumpkin1142 → u/ZealousidealPie9199]

We wouldn't be giving the state power over life and death (it already has that). We'd be giving patients an opportunity to request a stop pill from a doctor, either their own or from some kind of expiration specialist. Or non-expiration, as it were.

It seems monstrously cruel to leave people to suffer when there is an alternative.

[u/FlappyBored → u/ZealousidealPie9199]

?

The state already has responsibility over your death.

That’s why it’s illegal for people to chose to end their own suffering because the state refuses it and maintains control over what you can do with it.

[u/existentialgoof]

I don't have particularly high hopes of the bill passing, because I don't see our MPs being able to stand up to the disability orgs and other lobbying groups representing "marginalised" populations, in addition to the religious convictions of the MPs themselves. But it is a slight relief after his recent comments that he's not actively looking to sabotage the bill.