This is Prospect’s rolling coverage of the assisted dying debate. This page will be updated with the latest from our correspondent, Mark Mardell. Read the rest of our coverage here
1st April
At first glance, Joseph Awuah-Darko’s Instagram account is full of pictures that spell contentment: ducks gliding gracefully over sparkling water, him cuddling up to a fluffy white dog, jumping for joy at scoring Kendrick Lamar tickets.
Like a lot of 28-year-olds on social media, there’s also lots of evidence of pleasure in his twin love of food and travel, from orange rice in Ghana to a classic English fry up in Mayfair, as well as giant prawns in Lamu and pear and ricotta bruschetta in Crete.
So far, so ordinary.
But Awuah-Darko’s Instagram account is far, far from ordinary. And so is he.
Not just because in the world’s eyes he is a bit of a superstar. Joseph Nana Kwame Awuah-Darko, aka Okuntakinte, has been remarkably successful at anything he turns his hand to: music, art, philanthropy and acting, although he says writing is his first love.
No, it is not his achievements that make this account remarkable, but because Awuah-Darko is tracing his journey towards a legal assisted death. Not because he is dying of a terminal illness, but because he finds life intolerable.
His account is headed “I AM NOT IMPORTANT. This instagram is basically a scrapbook and public requiem of my demise.”
He is bi-polar, and on 9th December told the world: “Two days ago I announced my decision to legally end my life due to my struggles with treatment resistant bipolar disorder. And now, my fiancé has left me. And I don’t blame him. We’re still friends, but the pain is still quite real. I often find that romantic love and the pressures that come with it can sometimes be all too consuming. I’m healing and I am trying to connect in a different way. Even as I pursue my path with assisted euthanasia, the idea I have is called the Last Supper project. Basically, for the next few months, I’d like anyone who is willing to invite me over to prepare their favorite meal for dinner. We’ll break bread with friends and loved ones and I’ll bring post-its, board games, origami and fellowship with no judgement. I want to find meaning again with people while I have times to live on earth.”
Judging by the huge success of the project he seems to have done so, but as his death date of 30th July rapidly approaches, he shows no sign of changing his mind. There is something profoundly sad and disturbing in such a man wishing to extinguish himself, not least because worldly success has not eluded him.
He was born in London in 1996, but when he was five, his family moved back to Ghana.
In 2016, he released his music video “Melanin Girls”, which was not only a hit but also started a social media campaign encouraging dark-skinned girls to celebrate and express pride in their appearance. It became an anti-bleaching campaign.
Three years later, he held a solo exhibition at Gallery 1957, which included paintings and sculptural pieces.
He was selected as one of the 21 emerging African contemporary artists by the Mastercard Foundation, and became the youngest person in history to be recognised by the West African Business Awards. He was also awarded “Most Promising Social Entrepreneur” in May 2018.
In 2019, Forbes magazine named him among the “30 Under 30” creatives on the African continent, recognising his contribution to the contemporary art sector.
I’ve been aware of his story since the autumn of 2024 but felt slightly awkward about writing about his decision without talking to him, partly because I was concerned that I’m taking his words at face value (I’ve asked him for an interview twice, but had no response.) Now he has spoken to the Times I feel less concerned.
His very personal story intersects quite directly with the policy concerns of those who are opposed to the notion of assisted dying. They fear that if assisted dying—or “assisted suicide”, as they prefer to call it—becomes legal, then death becomes, to use an inappropriate turn of phrase, a lifestyle choice, perhaps even a whim, rather than something that happens to you inevitably.
This is why Kim Leadbeater has gone out of her way to stress that her bill is only available for the terminally ill, with a very definite diagnosis and a short time to live.
The Netherlands has no such strictures, and recent figures indicate that the number of euthanasia deaths rose from 9,064 in 2023 to 9,958 in 2024. While the vast majority of people—86 per cent—had an advanced physical disease such as cancer, 219 people died for psychiatric reasons, compared with 138 in 2023. In 2010, there were only two such cases.
This appears to have alarmed one of the bodies set up to monitor such processes. The Regional Review Commission for Euthanasia notes “the great caution that a doctor must observe if the euthanasia request (largely) arises from suffering resulting from a mental illness.”
The Guardian wrote: “The NVVE, the Dutch right-to-die society, said the overall figures matched demand. ‘The figures increase slightly each year,’ said the group’s chair, Fransien van ter Beek. ‘This shows the option of euthanasia is increasingly accepted and used.’”
Which is—I repeat—exactly the worry of opponents: that having someone kill you becomes seen by society as a legitimate choice. They fear that it will rapidly be accepted that people will mandate their time to die for whatever reasons they fancy—not just terminal illness or depression, but simply because they choose to leave the stage at that point.
Like so much in the debate about assisted dying, this fear seems overblown. Indeed, many arguments against offering people a moral choice—one judged immoral by others—are coloured by a peculiar anxiety. It’s the strange conviction of the concerned moralist that choices such as gay marriage, homosexuality, abortion, or transgender identity are so irresistibly alluring that, given the option, most people will seize them.
This may say more about the psychology of the worried moralist than anything else. But it seems particularly off-beam when applied to assisted dying. Even in the Netherlands, there are numerous hoops to jump through. Awuah-Darko is still waiting for a confirmed date—he had to undergo a rigorous process of psychological assessment before that was even possible.
But Awuah-Darko himself welcomes the debate it has prompted. After he told the South African news site IOL about his plan, it wrote: “Okuntakinte‘s journey is a wake-up call. It forces us to ask: Why do we still struggle to talk about mental illness openly?
“Why do we dismiss invisible suffering as ‘not serious enough’? How many people in South Africa feel the same way Okuntakinte does but have no one to talk to?”
It continued: “On 30th July Okuntakinte will take his final steps in the Netherlands, where his request for non-violent assisted death has been approved after four years.
“But before that day comes, he will continue to sit at tables filled with laughter, stories, and warmth. He will continue to remind us that even in the darkest moments, human connection matters.
“His story is not just about death, it’s about what it means to truly live. As people, we must learn from his journey. We must break the silence around mental health. We must create spaces where people feel seen, heard, and understood.
“Because in the end, all anyone really wants is to be held in love before they go.”
31st March
One of the assisted dying bill’s most vocal critics on the committee, Naz Shah, has savaged the whole process and said she hopes it fails when it returns to the House of Commons at the end of April.
In an interview in the New Statesman magazine, she says she feels “disheartened that I will not be able to vote for the bill, because it’s just not fit for purpose”.
The Statesman’s associate editor, Hannah Barnes, writes that the Labour MP for Bradford West is clearly suffering after the gruelling committee sessions yet “though clearly sleep-deprived, remained sharp.” “The one thing that is glaringly obvious is that this is not how we do legislation,” Shah tells her.
Shah is frustrated that no impact assessment has yet been published for the committee to examine. “How can you legislate on something that you don’t even know what the impact is going to be?”
She also discussed the difficulties of scrutinising a bill without having much detail on how it will be implemented. “We have no idea what the [assisted dying] service will look like. We don’t have a model. We don’t know who could provide this service, who couldn’t provide the service. Is it going to be hospices? Is it going to be charities? Is it going to be for-profit? That’s not good enough.”
Shah also spoke to the Independent about what she calls the “fundamentally flawed” bill. The newspaper says her comments come “as data shows that 393 amendments were put forward by MPs who opposed the bill at its second reading. Of these, 330 were rejected by the committee, 31 were withdrawn before going to a vote and another 32 were accepted”.
Shah said: “When there’s this narrative of ‘we have listened’, no: that’s not true. The evidence is there in black and white. The biggest changes to the bill… all of these big-ticket items—the ones that have weakened it, in my opinion—have come from the bill sponsor.”
One of the mysteries, at least to me, of this bill is whether the full-scale assault on it—by critics, heavily amplified by the right-wing press, will have the intended impact on MPs when they come to vote.
In a fair-minded and balanced editorial, the Sunday Times argues the government gave Leadbeater a “hospital pass” by not taking over the process, and has made the passage of the bill look “messy” and “chaotic”, particularly with the recent change which could delay implementation to 2029. “For supporters of the bill, this is the equivalent of kicking it into the very long grass, from which it may never emerge. For those who oppose it, and there are many, including disability campaigners, it provides an opportunity to dump a flawed piece of legislation.”
So what does Shah, one of those opponents, think? Will her colleagues dump it as she urges? “I genuinely don’t know,” she said. “I don’t want it to go through as it is.”
