I have little time and often little respect for the Labour MP Naz Shah. Yes I appreciate that she’s had a very hard life and has suffered domestic violence but there’s been parts of her time in the House of Commons as MP for Bradford West, when she’s shown her nasty side such as when she retweeted a fake Owen Jones post that said that those girls raped by Islamic Rape Gangs should ‘shut up for the sake of diversity’. A cleverer person might have had a second look at such a post and considered whether it was parody or not and declined to share just in case and a person not saturated in identity politics and in possession of a functioning moral compass might have recoiled at the fake Owen Jones and moved on. Naz Shah did neither of these things and it has stained her reputation up until today.

But just as a broken clockwork clock will read the correct time twice a day Naz Shah has done something right. Naz Shah has come out and pointed out the great many problems with Kim Leadbeater’s very flawed assisted suicide bill.

Naz Shah can see what many supporters of the Bill are either failing to see or refusing to see and that is that there’s no protection from coercion for those who are terminally ill and contemplating suicide. Naz Shah is concerned that doctors will be allowed to suggest suicide to patients, that conditions such as anorexia will be considered as reasons to kill patients and the vagueness of the assurances that patients rights will be safeguarded given to the Committee by the pro-death advocates.

Please read the entirety of Naz Shah’s archived interview with The New Statesman which can be found via the link below:

https://archive.ph/2025.03.29-064328/https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/society/2025/03/naz-shah-interview-assisted-dying-bill-is-not-fit-for-purpose

Whatever other negative attributes Ms Shah has and her party and her political path have still exist for me but I find I have to praise her for her challenges to what is a particularly awful and dangerous Bill. This Bill if enacted would give the State and its agents, especially those in our crappy NHS, the ability to kill more Britons per year than were executed for property offences (1092) in the UK in the late 18^th century. That’s not something that should be unchallenged and Ms Shah has done the correct thing in challenging it.