Dame Esther Rantzen Dies Nineteen Days After the Assisted Dying Vote
The broadcaster and Childline founder has died aged 86, nineteen days after MPs rejected the bill she had spent her final years campaigning for. Diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in January 2023, she became the most prominent public advocate of a change in the law. Her family paid tribute to the “most wonderful mother” and a “cherished grandmother” who will be remembered for her “endless capacity for joy”.
The politics of her last years were unusually personal, and she made them so deliberately. She joined the Swiss clinic Dignitas in December 2023, and said this month that she had become “too physically fragile” to travel there despite having “spent the money and made the plans”. Her verdict on the law that kept her in Britain was unsparing: “I knew it would be like this if I died in this country because the current criminal law preventing anyone to help me shorten my death is messy and cruel.” She measured the cost in the people around her, who “either cannot visit me, or when they do, see me suffering pain or indignity”. On 11 September the Commons voted the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill down by 286 to 270, reversing the 314 to 291 in favour recorded the previous June. Her response was that it was a “tragic day”, and that “I am sure a change in the law will come. I am deeply sad that it won’t come soon enough for many of the people who need it.” Watch whether any member brings the bill back in this Parliament.