Polly's pop at a "pitiless God" distorts my argument

There’s more than one argument for opposing assisted dying.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A hand rest gently on another outstretched hand.

Alexander Grey on Unsplash.

I hesitate to have a pop at the venerable Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, partly because I like and admire her work. And partly, in this new media environment in which my enemy’s friend is my troll, I fear aligning myself with foam-flecked righties who use words like “Guardianista” and “wokerati”.

But she wrote a column late last week about assisted suicide that was just plain wrong. And, actually, I think she’s being profoundly illiberal on the subject, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.

Assisted suicide – voluntary euthanasia, assisted dying, call it what you will – was a hobby horse of mine some 15 years ago when I wrote a book against it. Slightly more recently, Toynbee and I were on a broadcast interview together on an entirely unrelated subject when, to the bemusement of the presenter, she suddenly raised assisted dying to have a go at me. It was quite flattering.

Anyway, last week’s Toynbee column was of a kind, dismissing the anti-euthanasia case as the province of religious nutcases (presumably like me). Consider this massive straw man of a sentence: “Only God can decide how long we should suffer before death comes at a time of his pitiless whim, they say.”

I’m used to this, though not from Toynbee. Debating assisted suicide, it’s only a matter of minutes before someone will say that I shouldn’t impose my “sanctity of life” beliefs on other people. Eh? I’ve never used that phrase in this context (whatever it may mean). In fact, my views on assisted suicide are entirely secular, though informed by a faith that respects the primacy of compassion for and defence of the most vulnerable in our society.

I believe that a jurisdiction that enshrines in its legislature the principle that some lives are more worth living than others takes us into very dangerous moral territory. Related to that, a two-tier structure for the value of human life in the medical professions is abhorrent. That’s why I say that to despatch the weakest and most vulnerable among us is unacceptably illiberal.

The terminally ill, the disabled, the profoundly depressed and the aged and vulnerable really shouldn’t be treated as a nuisance to be helped on their way.

A bill will come back to parliament to change the law to allow assisted suicide this autumn. With new PM Keir Starmer in favour and a very different configuration of the House of Commons post-election, its chances of passing are said to be high.

But even Lord Falconer, the parliamentary poster-boy for assisted suicide, who convened a ludicrous “independent” commission in 2012 stuffed with euthanasia enthusiasts and useful idiots, has accepted that no so-called safeguards can entirely ensure that no lives will be lost to malfeasance or malpractice.

So, my question to Falconer and Toynbee is this: How many unnecessary lives lost to assisted suicide is enough to have what you want? 100? 50? One? Another number?

It’s commonplace for deeply distressing accounts of agonising deaths to be rehearsed in support of assisted suicide. Toynbee did so last week. But as Falconer must (or should) know, hard cases make bad law. The only focus here should be on how best to ensure that no one need die a bad death.

For Falconer and his supporters the solution is to legislate so that terminally ill patients can be helped to kill themselves. But speaking to end-of-life medical professionals, such as Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, many of whom claim that advances now mean that bad deaths are vanishingly few, it’s clear that the UK’s world-leading palliative care has in sight the day when no one need die a bad death.

That’s no comfort to someone who is suffering at the end of their life right now. But assisted suicide puts that palliative care target in jeopardy, when it makes death a form of medical treatment. Look at the record – the Netherlands now allows assisted suicide for those who are simply “tired of life”. That’s not where end-of-life care should go.

The burden of proof under the Suicide Act (1961) lies with the defendant, who currently faces a maximum jail sentence of 14 years for assisting or encouraging a suicide. Those who have demonstrated that they have acted with compassion and consent have in turn been treated with compassion and leniency in the application of the law. Invert that burden of proof, with the Crown needing to prove that an unscrupulous relative or friend coerced a victim into suicide, and we’re into a fresh hell of moral jeopardy.

The law works as it stands. The terminally ill, the disabled, the profoundly depressed and the aged and vulnerable really shouldn’t be treated as a nuisance to be helped on their way. Again, as we might expect Toynbee to know, that is wholly illiberal.

It looks like the assisted suicide lobby will get what they want this year. It will be hailed as a great liberal social reform. Doubtless they will find it in their hearts to forgive me if I continue to demur.

Article

Church and state

Comment

Community

Trauma

5 August 2025

5 min read

After Southport: how to communicate amid tragedy, rumour, and riot

Handling the media in the aftermath brings dread, discretion and dignity

Stuart Haynes

Stuart is communications director for the Diocese of Liverpool.

A media pack await a press conference in a street.

Media covering the Southport attacks.

The Emperor of Byzantium, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Working from home in the quiet town of Ormskirk, about four miles from Southport, the first I noticed was a cacophony of sirens accompanied by our local Facebook groups buzzing with speculation over what it was this time. The news started breaking. An incident in Southport, vague details at first but enough to start that feeling of unease.

Then the phone call and email. The local vicar and one of our Archdeacons seeking advice as inevitably the media would be looking for comment. I’ve taken a similar call many times over the 20 years I have worked with the church. It sets a mix of contradictory emotions. Selfishly you can’t help thinking there goes my plans for the day before you are sharply brought up to the knowledge that the reason for this is a tragedy for others.

Southport brought out a further emotion. When I was a student, I lived for a year close to the location of the stabbings. 30 years on and the suburban area I knew was seemingly unchanged. Yet everything was different.

The role of the press officer at this point involves navigating a tricky balance. You have a job to do, the journalists you deal with have a job to do. You are constantly fielding phone calls, jotting messages juggling time slots. You have a relentless barrage of people putting interview requests in and you want to ensure the right voices are heard and that those who represent aren’t worn out by interview upon interview.

Then you remember what caused the story in the first place. You think of the emergency services working hard to support those in need. Above all you think of the victims and the families – at that time not knowing how many or how serious. And the sense of gloom deepens as the rumours of how serious the situation spreads before you get word of a police conference fearing the worst before the worst gets confirmed.

At these times the mood amongst the media teams always feels strange. Acutely aware of the pain of the situation and sympathetic to what’s happened they can’t escape the job they have to do. I have seen this over many years mainly through the management of the press pens outside funerals at Liverpool Cathedral and churches across the region. You get to know some of the pack well, mainly and somewhat grimly reuniting at the next tragedy. They are massively co-operative with a strong sense of camaraderie, yet you can feel the pressure coming down to them from their news and picture desks. So, a sharing of resources and support occurs underpinned by a hint of journalistic competition.

The press officer’s role here is to feed the machine. It’s hungry. They have time to fill and very often, particularly so close to when the event happened, everyone is more speculative than informed. The machine needs feeding whatever and the church voice can be a calm voice of authority speaking the anxieties and wishes of the local community. However, we don’t want to be rent-a-voice, we are not helpful if we seem to be trying to grandstand over someone else’s grief. We need to show the compassion and love that our faith and Christian values teach us.

That became critically important on the second night when things turned ugly and the story was hijacked by rioting right wing mobs. Having been to the peaceful and respectful vigil on the afternoon I drove back past the scene of the stabbings on my way home. You could smell the tension in the air as people were converging on the streets exuding a purpose that did not seem like the sorrow from earlier that day.

The media aftermath for the church was then to support the efforts showing the community rebuilding whilst also calling for harmony, standing shoulder to shoulder with representatives from all faiths.

And on to the funerals.

There are many patterns to organising press coverage at a funeral. Usually, we need a pen to marshal the cameras in a way that enables them to get the pictures they need whilst maintaining a respectful, sympathetic distance. It feels there is a nigh on obligatory picture of the service order, my hand featuring in many of these shots. There is a lot of standing and waiting, clarifying the minutia of the service so the reporters can tell the story and capture the atmosphere.

Yet for me each funeral is different as I try to ensure the family’s wishes predominate. Southport was a case in point. Of the two funerals in Anglican churches (one victim was from a Roman Catholic family) one family wanted no coverage and my role was simply to make sure that wish was honoured. The other saw cameras in and around church and a full suite of reporters so we work hard with them to ensure respect. Mostly that involves a combination of setting consistent fair rules and supplying enough for them to tell the story. Journalists can cope with told they can’t do something provided their rivals are getting the same message. Lose the consistency you lose the pack as I experience outside Ken Dodd’s funeral when I had to scream at the press pack to get back in their pen before the cortege arrived.
I see this as a ministry. I have learnt techniques over the years, witnessed fights in graveyards, stood soaking waiting for the funeral to end and the coffin to leave so I can relax. Doing this is a privilege which spills over into the funerals I conduct as a priest. As do the learnings from those funerals that, in turn, inform my ministry. Get it right it becomes a fitting, respectful and dignified way for the wider community to say goodbye to a victim.

Then when it’s done we move on. The press pack to the next day’s story myself to the tasks from the routine job that I had to ditch. That’s easier for us. But the families and loved ones can’t easily move on from their pain and grief.

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