The power politics of choice

The parroting of the language of neoliberalism by Andrew Denton in the debate about physician-assisted suicide is astonishing. Has he not understood that the neoliberal experiments of the past 40 years only increased the power of the privileged and further marginalised the weak and the vulnerable? Last week’s Grenfell Tower disaster should remind us that policies framed using the language of choice – in this case, deregulation and outsourcing to cut the taxes of the wealthy – never help the vulnerable, such as the poor and the migrants who lost their lives. The privileged will always be able to exercise their choices if assisted suicide is legalised. But the disabled, the elderly and the infirm will be at an even greater risk of being pressured into exercising their newly acquired “choice” to die.