The progressive case for ‘dignity in dying’

Assisted dying is not just about patient rights at the end of life but about how society as a whole approaches death and dying, and Lord Falconer’s Bill does not champion rampant individualism but rather it challenges paternalism and the imposition of unshared principles. It is a progressive cause of our time, and an issue that will affect us all. It is time for change.

Thatcher’s legacy in Northern Ireland

For Margaret Thatcher, Northern Ireland wasn’t just a political minefield but a personal tragedy.

Just months before she took office in 1979, her close friend and ally, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary Airey Neave, who led her campaign for the Conservative Party Leadership, was killed when a bomb, planted by republican terrorists, went off from under his car as he drove out of the Palace of Westminster.

Margaret Thatcher’s mixed fortunes in Wales

In 2008, the Plaid Cymru AM Bethan Jenkns declared that plans for a portrait of Margaret Thatcher to hang in the Welsh Assembly was an “insult to the people of Wales”. At the same time, the then Conservative AM and now MP for the Vale of Galmorgan Alun Cairns praised the ex PM for having “transformed the Welsh economy.”