The defeat of the Assisted Dying Bill at Holyrood will be read in many ways. Some will see it as a decisive rejection of assisted dying in Scotland; others as a procedural setback in a longer journey towards legalisation. Neither interpretation is quite right. What occurred was more precise, and more politically instructive. The Scottish Parliament did not reject the principle of assisted dying – it concluded that this particular Bill could not introduce such a system safely.
That distinction matters. It should shape how we understand the campaign that led to this moment, and how we prepare for what comes next.
