SARAH VINE: Yes, I again the proper to die – however that Bill merely wasn’t match for objective

The assisted dying Bill, which on Friday finally ran out of time in the Lords, has been almost as divisive as Brexit. Two of my dearest friends have fallen out over it, and there have been strong words on both sides.

The cross-bench peer and former Paralympian, Baroness (Tanni) Grey-Thompson, has been targeted with highly abusive emails accusing her of letting ‘people die in pain’. The MP Kim Leadbeater, who introduced the Bill, has also been the object of abuse, which must be very frightening for her given that her sister was the murdered MP Jo Cox.

At every level the whole thing has been fraught with emotion, whether via the testimony of high-profile celebrity campaigners such as Esther Rantzen or the quietly moving and very dignified Baroness Prentis, who spoke about her own experience of cancer and the siren call of death at moments of deep despair.

But I, for one, am relieved that the Lords has pressed pause on this whole debate.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not against assisted dying as a notion per se. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I’m strongly in favour, in principle. Like many people, I have known friends and relatives who have suffered appallingly in the final stages of their lives and have often wished there could be some mechanism in place to help end their suffering in a dignified and painless manner.

But there is a big difference between principle and practicality, and that’s why this Bill ultimately didn’t stand up. For it to work, it needed to balance the heartfelt desire to help those in the final stages of life with the cold, hard practicalities of how to safeguard the vulnerable. And it just didn’t.

As Baroness Grey-Thompson put it, there were ‘too many gaps’ and too few ways of protecting people from coercion (which by its very nature is hard to spot), especially in the case of the disabled or cognitively impaired. There were also concerns about the definition of terminal illness, and whether conditions like diabetes might be interpreted as such.

There’s a reason more than 1,000 amendments were tabled: the Bill had more holes in it than Swiss cheese. As well-intentioned as it was, it just wasn’t fit for purpose.

It wasn’t only the Lords who identified this: every reputable body, from the Royal College Of Physicians to campaigners against domestic abuse, the British Association Of Social Workers, Mind, the Royal College Of Psychiatrists and many others, including Professor Sir Louis Appleby, the Government’s suicide prevention adviser, had serious reservations about it (the latter argued that the Bill would effectively concede the principle that suicide can be seen as ‘rational’).

So however disappointed or frustrated its supporters may feel, they have only themselves to blame for doing a poor job in the first place.

And it is wrong for them to frame opposition to it in the Lords as driven by spite or outmoded religious concerns, as some have done. It was stopped because it would have had serious unintended consequences.

As to the accusation that the Lords acted ‘undemocratically’, I’m afraid that is just childish.

For a start, the Bill was never in the Labour manifesto, meaning that the public did not vote for it. In fact, arguably it was pretty undemocratic to introduce such an important piece of legislation via the back door in a private members’ bill. But mainly, did its supporters really think the Lords were just going to nod something as important as this through?

Of course not. It would have been a dereliction of duty. This is a highly complex moral issue that requires open and honest debate, not a quick fix with the potential for unintended consequences.

A stark reminder of this is the example of Noelia Castillo Ramos, who was euthanised by the Spanish state last month at her own request. As is the more recent case, widely reported over the past few days, of Wendy Duffy, the bereaved mother who ended her life in a Swiss clinic last week. Both these women had suffered great tragedy in their lives, but neither was terminally ill. They were not suffering in agony on their deathbeds, they were just very vulnerable individuals. With the right help, they might have recovered. Now they never will.

The House of Lords is often characterised as nothing more than a gilded nursing home for toffs and brown-nosers. And sometimes it can seem that way. But on this occasion it has shown it can have real purpose. Thanks to the dogged determination of certain individuals it has done its job, which is to block a poorly drafted piece of legislation that would have done more harm than good.

That is exactly why the second chamber exists, and exactly what it is for: to stop bad government passing bad law. Far from undermining democracy, the Lords has helped safeguard it.

Kate’s great in heels

One is always slightly in awe of the Princess of Wales’s general composure. But her ability to carry out high profile public engagements in even higher stilettos is almost a superpower. The pair she wore to yesterday’s Anzac Day memorial at the Cenotaph, pictured left, were unusually vertiginous, even by her standards. How on earth does she do it? I would fall flat on my face.

As one of the many renters in Britain now in possession of a Section 21 notice of eviction thanks to the Government’s new Renters’ Rights Act (and they say irony is dead), which comes into effect on May 1, I see I am in good company. Tory housing spokesman James Cleverly finds himself in the same boat, having been given his marching orders in his Braintree constituency. I wonder if any of the Labour Cabinet are affected? Or do they, like Angela Rayner, have their own property portfolios to fall back on?

Another casualty of class war 

Malvern Girls, aka Malvern St James, has become the latest school to succumb to Labour’s VAT raid on private schools. Now all those who work there will lose their jobs – and the pupils will have their educa tions upended. What have they done to deserve this? Nothing. Just casualties of Labour’s vicious class war.

Last week, Meta fired 8,000 staff – 10 per cent of its workforce – to make way for AI. Even more worrying, the company is installing tracking technology on its remain ing employees’ computers ‘to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its artificial intel ligence models’. In other words, it’s using humans to train the machines that will eventually render them redundant. As dystopian visions go, this is about as sinister as it gets.

Oluwole Omofemi’s portrait of Prince William, right, is in a style known as ‘hyper realism’. Except he seems to have miraculously grown a full head of hair. Not since Holbein has a courtly painter deployed such shameless licence. Let’s hope it pays off. Arise, Sir Oluwole?

If I had a pound for every commentator who has predicted the departure of Keir Starmer, I might be able to afford a sandwich at Gail’s. Meanwhile, the PM clings on. Sure, he’s a disaster. But why get rid of him now? Someone’s got to take the flak for this Government’s incompetence.

Rapist’s grin says it all

Egyptian asylum seeker Karin Al-Danasurt, one of three men who brutally gang-raped a woman on Brighton beach, left Hove Crown Court grinning from ear to ear despite being found guilty. To him, it’s all just one big joke – and you can see why: not only has the taxpayer been funding his accommodation since he arrived here in 2024 (not to mention his legal representation in this case), but the judge also heard the three men are in the process of appealing their asylum refusals and may not even face deportation. Surely such an act of barbarity should automatically halt any such claim?