Macron has spied an easy win with his assisted dying Bill

Emmanuel Macron was predictably theatrical when he introduced his Bill on the end of life yesterday. In the proposed legislation, medical staff would be authorised to help their patients to die – which Macron described as a law of ‘fraternity’. He pronounced: ‘With this text, we look death in the face.’ A guaranteed headline in the Catholic daily La Croix.

The President has often favoured dark suits and I have previously described him as having a funereal mien. But he was positively bouncy extolling the Bill, which will be debated by the National Assembly this spring.

He chose to kick off the debate on death with an unprecedented joint interview with La Croix and the leftist Libération: the choice of the newspapers was calculated and calibrated. The questions were predictably anodyne but Macron’s opinions on death were nonetheless fascinating.  

Why this and why is Macron addressing it now? It’s easy to assume that the debate on assisted dying would provoke no riots, so as a domestic project it’s probably a pretty safe topic for the President, diverting attention from the multitude of social, economic, political and strategic questions facing the nation.