After two years of impassioned arguments, tearful personal testimonies, noisy protests and ethical dilemmas, the assisted dying bill for England and Wales failed on a knife edge.
Campaigners on the pro side largely blame the House of Lords for making it seem an impossible struggle to get the bill through parliament, after blocking it the first time by putting through more than 1,000 amendments so that it ran out of time.
The opponents are more inclined to think that they ended up picking so many holes in the legislation that it was bound to fail, as they raised more and more objections on safety grounds.
But the truth was that many MPs felt momentum was lost when it became clear it was not a priority of Andy Burnham’s government.
Although as Greater Manchester mayor he had said he would probably vote in favour of the initial private member’s bill, in July Burnham said he now thought the bigger issue should be to improve end-of-life support.
It suddenly became very unlikely that the government would throw its weight behind giving the bill its full backing or expending energy on policy development to help it succeed.
Burnham’s change of position was a blow to the pro campaigners after Keir Starmer had long given his tacit support to the first bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, even though it was a conscience vote.
In private, many MPs also admit that another factor in losing support for the bill was that backing it did not do Starmer’s administration many favours.
The bill caused bitter division among its MPs and diverted attention from the many pressing issues that might be more electorally important to Labour, such as the cost of living and healthcare. As it took up more and more parliamentary bandwidth and media airtime, former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney was among the advisers who thought the legislation was a bad idea.
There were also some reservations about the sponsors of the bill hoping to use the Parliament Act to force it through if blocked a second time by the Lords, with a rule that states if the same bill is approved twice by the Commons in two consecutive sessions and opposed by peers, then it can be passed anyway.
However, this would have meant it being unchanged from the bill presented last year – which worried some MPs who voted for the bill in principle but wanted to see it amended with further protections against coercion.
One of the many with a complicated personal position on the issue was Labour MP David Burton-Sampson, who voted in favour of it progressing to give people individual choice, even though he was personally against assisted dying because of his Christian faith; however, he said he would be uncomfortable with it passing into law without further safeguards.
When it became clear that Burnham lacked enthusiasm for the bill, it ultimately gave some of those MPs who supported it in theory – but had misgivings about it in practice – permission to absent themselves from the vote.
The quiet withdrawal of support is evident in the numbers: the last time MPs voted, 291 voted against it, versus 314 in favour. This time, 286 voted against, while just 270 were in favour, a fall of 45.
Campaigners in favour of assisted dying say it is not the end of the road for their efforts to secure a change in the law – and the public still seems to be in favour of the policy in essence.
But MPs are likely to be wary of devoting much more time this parliament to a debate when the arguments have been rehearsed near exhaustively and opinion in parliament is still so evenly split.
