Assisted Dying bill and Hate Crime law expose the left's obsessions

Riding alongside them are rafts of arms-length public bodies, quangos and charities. They are often staffed up by superannuated placemen whose large salaries and generous pensions are provided indirectly by the Scottish Government.

Effectively, this is government lobbying itself to arrive at pre-determined conclusions. They all share an over-riding survival instinct which is to have no values at all beyond influencing and capturing politicians and legislation on behalf of clients (often hidden). Everyone is their friend and their moral and ethical codes are guided by whatever can provide a decent rate of return.

Liam McArthur, MSP, is proposing the bill (Image: PA)

We’d been told that politics would be done differently in Scotland than in England. It would be more family-friendly and more diverse, seeking to make it possible for a wider constituency of citizens to be elected to Holyrood. Behave yourself.

The professional SNP has been hollowed out by a drone class whose actions and words are controlled by a series of electronic ukases sent from central command. It’s basically our version of the Manchurian Candidate.

They are featureless, largely talentless and have been chosen solely on their proven ability to ask no questions and liberate themselves from any original thought. In all of this they have been reinforced by a boutique leftism that has captured those organisations which purport to represent society’s marginalised and deprived communities: the Labour party in Scotland and the Scottish trade union movement. Salon leftism has replaced authentic Socialism with what they call “progressiveness”.

Unlike Socialism, it proceeds along the paths of least resistance that require no hard work and – most importantly – involve only minimal contact with working class people. Once, if you were a Socialist or considered yourself to be on the left you advocated and campaigned to improve the daily lives and circumstances of our poorest communities: more jobs; better pay and conditions; decent affordable housing; access to universal healthcare and a preferential option in public spending for those areas most in need of help.

Scotland’s new progressives, on the other hand, revile working-class people and seek to marginalise them even further. In recent years this has been most wretchedly evident in the campaign behind the proposed gender recognition legislation aimed at allowing men to become women and automatic access to female-only safe spaces and female-targeted services.

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It would have resulted in the data that informs spending priorities in these areas being distorted. These are lifeline services for vulnerable women, including many seeking refuge from violent men and places where they can receive help and support. The campaign was fuelled by deep currents of misogyny and homophobia. Lesbians were (and remain) the focus of their loathing.

The Scottish Government’s Hate Crime Act doesn’t even attempt to hide the elites’ loathing of working-class people. That much is clear in Police Scotland’s advice ahead of the Act becoming law on April 1. This specifically targets poor, young men in disadvantaged communities. Police Scotland said last week: "We know that young men aged 18-30 are most likely to commit hate crime, particularly those from socially excluded communities who are heavily influenced by their peers."

As the SNP’s failed drugs strategy keeps resulting in increasingly larger annual death tolls very soon there won’t be many young, white men to throw in the pokey for being unpleasant to one another. Large brandies all round in the parliamentary bar.

The latest attempt to bring an Assisted Dying bill forward is similarly characterised by detestation of the poor. This well-funded campaign has found favour among the salon progressives backed by media organisations and journalists who have reneged on their responsibility to analyse its consequences. Rather less attention has been given to last month’s consultation launch of a Holyrood Bill aimed at giving terminally ill people a legal right to palliative care.

This proposed bill has already won support by many medics and charities who oppose Liam McArthur’s suicide bill, including Our Duty of Care, the umbrella body which represents a wide cohort of medical and health care specialists. The launch came in the same week that delegates at the BMA Consultants’ Conference passed a motion which was highly critical of assisted suicide.

In many countries, including Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands, the promised restrictions on who qualifies for assisted death have all but evaporated. Now, disabled people; those with non-terminal pain and people suffering mental health problems – dementia, depression, anorexia – are being targeted by the Killing Not Care sector.

Assisted Dying supporters (Image: free)

Last year, Professor Leonie Herx, one of the world’s most prominent palliative care experts, said that specialist end-of-life care based on respect for human life significantly reduces the incidence of suicidal feelings. “I have a lot of moral distress about the situation in Canada and the impact of this type of legislation on the poor and the vulnerable,” she told me last year.

“One case that horrified me from Holland was where a patient with dementia had to be held down leading her doctor to decide on her behalf that she no longer wanted to live. This triggered a device known as an Advanced Directive. When the patient resisted her family was enlisted to help hold her down while she was given the lethal medication.

“Now the authorities are allowed to give them a sedative in their coffee or their food to help calm them if they resist,” said Professor Herx. In Canada, an assisted death creep is well underway with “mature minors” now being regarded as fair game and the use of their own advanced directives. Last year, a mother’s request for euthanasia of her young disabled child was championed by parliamentarians.

There are reports of Canadians seeking euthanasia through loneliness and depression from social deprivation, or the inability to access basic care and support owing to costs. Poor conditions in care homes; fear of loneliness during the Covid lockdowns and prisoners being refused parole have led to suicidal thoughts and then the predations of the state-assisted death cult.

To them it all makes sense. These people, being poor and prone to health care, are a tax burden on the middle classes. They are already reviled by a political class of fake progressives for their untutored language and rough impulses. No-one will miss them if we just ease them out the picture.