The sham of an assisted dying ‘citizen’s jury’

It is remarkable that the BBC decided to give the latest PR exercise in favour of assisted suicide a big push by running it as news today that the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ citizen’s jury of 28 people has decided that euthanasia should be legalised. In a kind of broadcasting imprimatur it declared that the jury was ‘representative’ of the population as a whole and should therefore be regarded as indicative of the way sentiment is going.

Now that’s power: to frame dubious propaganda exercises organised by people already committed to change as the state of the nation. What wouldn’t I give to have the job of writing headlines for BBC Radio 4; authority without accountability.

I’ve said this before, but citizens’ juries or assemblies are the most spurious exercise in democracy. Any of us could get a selected group of people to produce the result we want, simply by picking the right people, framing the questions the right way, and getting the right set of people to give the expert briefings.