Leadbeater would go on to run a charity in her sister\u2019s name, but when the seat again became vacant in 2021, she was put forward for the acrimonious by-election to follow. She won by just 323 votes, in a time when Labour was at a low ebb in the national polls.<\/p>\n
In the proceeding years, through Labour\u2019s stint in the depths of oppositions then its first months in government, Leadbeater\u2019s identity, as she puts it, was \u201cvery much around being Jo\u2019s sister.\u201d So she bided her time as the phones rang across her offices in Westminster and back in her constituency \u2014\u00a0with various lobbying groups trying to attach themselves to her golden ticket from the private member’s ballot.<\/p>\n
Leadbeater insists that No.10 Downing Street never got in touch to ask her to take up the issue, but neither did they need to. The prime minister\u2019s long-held support for reform would be crucial in the government not crushing the bill.<\/p>\n
It was 2015 and the last time the Commons considered changing the law on assisted dying was when Starmer, the fledgling MP for Holborn and St Pancras, made his first big intervention in the political arena.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Just months into the job, Starmer, the former chief prosecutor for England and Wales-turned-MP, advocated \u2014 in detail \u2014 why the nation needed to break from the status quo in which people who help someone end their life could be jailed for up to 14 years.<\/p>\n
In a speech described politely as \u201clawyerly,\u201d he set out how he changed legal guidance to make it less likely that people motivated by compassion would face prosecution if they helped dying relatives end their lives abroad, a not uncommon act for those who have sufficient resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leadbeater would go on to run a charity in her sister\u2019s name, but when the seat again became…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[2935,80885,748,80886,30,80887,5205,33,393,4884,7909,3941,7910,1920,80888,807,80889,11582,1144,6738,48,712,1199,60422,16,15,80890,1764,12340,3595],"class_list":{"0":"post-200009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-assisted-dying","11":"tag-assisted-suicide","12":"tag-britain","13":"tag-christine-jardine","14":"tag-courts","15":"tag-danny-kruger","16":"tag-doctors","17":"tag-elections","18":"tag-england","19":"tag-great-britain","20":"tag-guernsey","21":"tag-health-care","22":"tag-isle-of-man","23":"tag-jersey","24":"tag-jo-cox","25":"tag-keir-starmer","26":"tag-kit-malthouse","27":"tag-lobbying","28":"tag-northern-ireland","29":"tag-patients","30":"tag-rights","31":"tag-scotland","32":"tag-services","33":"tag-shabana-mahmood","34":"tag-uk","35":"tag-united-kingdom","36":"tag-vicky-foxcroft","37":"tag-wales","38":"tag-welfare","39":"tag-wes-streeting"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114716029992264010","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}