Parliament is set to vote on legalizing assisted suicide in the United Kingdom in a matter of days, after Kim Leadbeater of the Labour Party introduced a bill to trigger the process. Keir Starmer, the prime minister and Labour Party leader, has made known his support of the measure despite the legislation's exclusion from the party’s electoral agenda. The decision to endorse assisted suicide, a profound matter of conscience for many people of faith, risks alienating a diverse coalition of people who have long upheld the value of life, community and care for the vulnerable.
I’ve been a Labour member since the age of 15, having campaigned for Ms. Leadbeater when she first ran for office a few years after the murder of her sister, M.P. Jo Cox, in 2016. Whenever the party fought back against the Conservative government’s cuts to free school meals, promised the return of the family doctor or pledged to build public housing for the most vulnerable, I felt alive with hope. Labour’s core promise—a better material future for all—strengthened my belief in a society rooted in compassion. But since launching a campaign within the Labour Party against legalized suicide, which I consider a form of social austerity, I’ve been met with the refrain, “Your only allies are the Tories.”
A commitment to the most vulnerable in society is precisely why I remain loyal to Labour. The party’s mission is a moral crusade, a movement to cultivate a caring society rather than one consumed by profit and self-interest. Harold Wilson, Labour’s third prime minister, once drew this direct line between Christianity and social democracy.
Britain’s Catholic bishops still follow this bond. Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth’s pastoral letter “Thou Shalt Not Kill” referenced sympathy with “the most vulnerable” who would feel they are a “financial drain.” To reject a disordered “social duty to end our lives when we become a burden” is to preserve an empathetic community.
This brings me to the legislative heartache of assisted suicide. The nonreligious Mr. Starmer set some hares running when he said that he was “personally committed” to looking at end-of-life care after his own personal encounters. Former M.P. Paul Blomfield has been a driving force behind this discussion, and his story is both heart-wrenching and eye-opening. Mr. Blomfield’s father took his own life, without assistance, at the age of 87 after a terminal lung cancer diagnosis.
“He’s one of many people who have been let down by the current law [prohibiting assisted suicide],” Mr. Blomfield said of his father. There are countless families facing similar agonizing choices.
Still, the Christian duty to oppose this bill arises from the deep understanding that we must protect life, even in the face of suffering and despair.
As Pope Francis has emphasized, quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the “will to cause death” is always wrong. Building on this teaching, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the letter “Samaritanus Bonus” in 2020, which called for the faithful to “accompany a suffering person in the terminal stages of life” and to combat what it described as “the greatest misery”: the “loss of hope in the face of death.”
Even some who support the bill, such as Anglican M.P. Wes Streeting, have admitted to feeling “genuinely conflicted,” worried that some vulnerable people could be pressured into making a choice they wouldn’t otherwise want. And for Catholic members of the cabinet like Mike Kane and Bridget Phillipson, this issue forces them to walk a tightrope between faith and leadership loyalty.
A political environment “numbing the conscience” will darken the search for moral truth. For legislators to discern well depends on whether they can judge well. As St. John Paul II’s encyclical “The Splendor of Truth” reminds us, “freedom of conscience is never freedom ‘from’ the truth but always and only freedom ‘in’ the truth.”
Labour M.P.s should be able to express their conscience on sensitive social issues without the party whip’s office breathing down their necks, or fearing the tacit support given to one side of the debate. Labour is, after all, a party of values. Let’s allow those multifaith values to be respected. The leadership should be wholly neutral and allow genuine debate to flourish.
Those claiming to represent religious voices in the party should not be afraid to show some healthy disagreement with the leadership. The party’s policy-forming conference allowed a vote over the winter fuel allowance cut, which pushed more of the elderly into poverty. Yet it hasn’t polled its members on assisted suicide.
Labour has a history of allowing tacit free votes on matters of conscience, from fox hunting under Tony Blair to the 2015 assisted dying bill. Respect for personal belief should be the standard, not the exception.
Catholicism in U.K. politics can never be about regaining a pre-Henrician past; only our church retains those memories. It’s about living out values that matter in little ways—compassion, justice and commitment to the common good. This is the Labour Party that once helped my impoverished Irish ancestors integrate into Nottingham. This is the party that I believe can lead us into the future.
At its core, Labour is not just a political party, but a moral movement. Catholics should feel right at home. Yet, if the current approach continues, more Catholics are sure to abandon the party.
Read next: In England and Wales, a bill to legalize assistance in dying faces church opposition.
