The Spectator’s Notes | 29 March 2008

For some weeks, I was thinking of writing against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, but despair crept over me. What is the point, I asked myself, when opinion seems to have moved so decisively against the idea that a human being is an inviolable entity? Nothing will stop this Bill, I thought. Now it turns out that I may be wrong. In the funny way British opinion has of noticing something only when it is almost too late, people are suddenly worried that the human and animal could be commingled, created and then destroyed by scientists. And their worry has coincided with the political weakness of the government. Hence Gordon Brown’s ‘climb-down’ about whipping the vote. But is it, in fact, a climb-down? The new edict is that Labour MPs may have a free vote on three clauses in the Bill, but must then vote for the Bill in its final form.