Dan Hitchens
@ddhitchens
Senior editor @firstthingsmag | Co-author, Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Johnson (out in 2025) | http://danhitchens.substack.com
Major unresolved problems with the Leadbeater bill: an A-Z guide. A is for Anorexia. Eating disorder charities and experts have warned that the bill leaves the door open for sufferers to qualify and receive an assisted death: x.com/ChelseaRoff/st…
1/ @vicderbyshire asked a simple question: why did you vote against every amendment eating disorder experts urged you to pass to close the anorexia loophole? A thread on the many eating disorder experts she chose to ignore ⬇️
Just one objection to this—very sharp—@kitwilsonwriter piece arguing that “It does not seem as if the twenty-first century has offered any insights that weren’t better articulated decades ago”:
We appear to have reasoned our way into an intellectual dead end, writes @kitwilsonwriter thecritic.co.uk/why-we-have-no…
So many stories like this, about the normalisation of AS. “Even after the patient agreed to a three-month period to try to improve his condition, the physician was suggesting the patient have a MAiD consult anyway. To my knowledge, the patient had never formally requested MAiD.”
I wrote an article about a disturbing conversation I witnessed this week in an Ontario hospital: linkedin.com/pulse/lawyers-… #MAID #healthlaw #endoflife #palliativecare
On Assisted Dying she says this Interesting contrast with Lord Falconer who thinks the Lords shouldn't cause much trouble Given how narrow the commons vote is, and the lack of absolute majority in the Commons, the Lords would be perfectly entitled to reject it outright
NEW: Tonia Antoniazzi won a landmark vote to decriminalise abortion. She talks to @siennamarla about being painted ‘as a monster’, and how the assisted dying bill she co-sponsors ‘may look like a completely different bill’ after changes in the Lords: politicshome.com/news/article/t…
New long read out at @firstthingsmag: The King And The Swarm, on why the digital revolution is really a putsch Pleased to see this run, it’s my favourite thing I’ve done so far this year firstthings.com/the-king-and-t…
Falconer suggested that the Lords must ‘uphold’ what ‘the Commons have decided to go ahead with’. A rather novel downgrading of our second house . I’ve explored this further in the @spectator
Why the Lords doesn’t have to accept the Assisted Dying Bill The reality is that both the House of Commons and the House of Lords play an equal role in the passing of legislation, except when it comes to matters of financial privilege ✍️ Nikki Da Costa…
The Leadbeater bill’s Commons majority fell by 58% in seven months. “I have had a lot of conversations with people since the...vote, and I still can’t find a historical precedent where support for a Private Members’ Bill has fallen so dramatically between 2nd and 3rd Reading.”
From @tomhunt1988: Why I still believe assisted suicide will not happen in the UK conservativehome.com/2025/07/11/tom…
"In 2023, $1.7tn of global real estate was managed by institutional investors such as private equity firms, insurance companies, hedge funds, banks and pension funds, up from $385bn in 2008." 📝 Read @timwhite100's article in The Guardian. buff.ly/xwZuZze