I find it morbidly hilarious, in a 'staring into the heat death of the universe' sort of way, that a government incapable of fixing a pothole or delivering a letter on the same continent within a week suddenly wants to be the ultimate arbiter of the eternal slumber. The assisted dying bill, a piece of legislation designed to allow the terminally ill a dignified exit, has been languishing in the legislative equivalent of a coma for over a year. Our esteemed MPs—those performative gargoyles we laughably call representatives—gave it the nod, only to watch it disappear into the red-carpeted purgatory known as the House of Lords. If there is a more perfect metaphor for the British state than a 'right to die' bill getting stuck in a chamber filled with people who seemingly forgot to die decades ago, I haven’t seen it.

Let’s be clear about the players in this theater of the absurd. On one side, you have the progressive wing, clutching their pearls and signaling their bottomless compassion while the National Health Service they claim to love collapses under the weight of its own administrative bloat. They want the 'right to choose,' yet they can’t even ensure you have the right to see a GP before your condition becomes a historical footnote. On the other side, we have the moralizing conservatives, who suddenly care deeply about the 'sanctity of life' despite spent decades ensuring that life is as miserable, expensive, and precarious as possible for anyone earning less than six figures. It is a clash of hypocrisies, a war of the vacuous, and as usual, the only people losing are those actually experiencing reality.

The House of Lords—that gilded warehouse for the politically irrelevant and the genetically fortunate—is currently the bottleneck. It’s a fascinating irony: a collection of octogenarians in ermine robes, many of whom owe their positions to the whims of dead monarchs or the backroom deals of disgraced Prime Ministers, are now the gatekeepers of the exit ramp. They are 'deliberating.' In Westminster-speak, 'deliberating' is the process of sitting on a problem until the person who complained about it is no longer around to witness the failure. It has been more than a year since the Commons moved on this, and yet the Peers are still shuffling papers, likely trying to figure out if there’s a way to tax the Styx or if Charon needs a diversity and inclusion consultant.

I am tired of the intellectual dishonesty that permeates this entire debate. Both sides treat the citizenry like recalcitrant toddlers. The state wants to bureaucraticize your expiration because it’s the only thing left it knows how to do. They’ve managed to ruin the middle of your life with taxes, surveillance, and soul-crushing urban planning, so it’s only natural they’d want to mismanage the ending, too. We live in a country where you can’t get a train to run on time, but we are supposed to believe the legislative machinery can handle the existential weight of a dignified death? The bill isn't stuck because of 'complex ethical concerns'; it's stuck because the system is sclerotic. It’s a machine with sand in the gears, operated by people who are more interested in the lunch menu at the Peers' Dining Room than the suffering of the plebeians.

Consider the historical parallel of the British bureaucracy. This is the same apparatus that took decades to figure out that maybe, just maybe, dumping raw sewage into the rivers was a bad idea. Now, they are tasked with the most intimate of human decisions. The delay isn't a bug; it’s a feature. By keeping the bill in a state of permanent 'review,' the government avoids the ire of the religious lobby while simultaneously pretending to the secularists that they are 'modernizing.' It is a masterclass in cowardice. While the MPs and Peers engage in their high-minded rhetorical gymnastics, the actual human beings this bill is supposed to help are forced to endure the very indignities the legislation seeks to prevent. But then, when has the comfort of a citizen ever outweighed the convenience of a committee?

Ultimately, this isn't about the 'right to die.' It’s about the state’s terminal inability to function. We are watching a dying system debate the logistics of death. It would be poetic if it wasn't so pathetic. I have no doubt that by the time the House of Lords finishes its 'scrutiny,' the bill will be so watered down and laden with caveats that you’ll need a three-man tribunal and a signed affidavit from the Ghost of Christmas Past just to get a lethal dose of aspirin. In the meantime, the rest of us are left to watch this agonizingly slow-motion car crash of a legislative process, reminded once again that in the eyes of Westminster, your life is just a data point to be managed, and your death is just an item on an agenda that they’ll get to... eventually. Next year. Maybe. If the tea is warm enough.