'Overwhelming relief' Emotional victory after years of campaigning

Emotional victory after years of campaigning

- Jessica Elgot

When Kim Leadbeater walked out of the chamber of the House of Commons into parliament's central lobby, she was embraced by some campaigners who did not even know if they would be alive when the vote came.

"Overwhelmingly the sense is relief," she said. Her close colleague, the Labour MP Lizzi Collinge, was near to tears. For the Conservative Kit Malthouse, standing nearby, it was the culmination of a decade of campaigning in his own party. More than 20 of his colleagues - more than he expected - backed the bill.

But even in the voting lobbies MPs were texting each other with doubts the bill would pass, so high was the tension on both sides.

When the speaker read out the numbers, Keir Starmer, a longtime supporter who has tried to stay studiously neutral, allowed himself a small smile. Some opponents, many of them female veteran Labour MPs, looked deeply shaken.

For Leadbeater, the vote came at a difficult time. Tomorrow, it would have been her sister Jo Cox's birthday, and last Monday was the ninth anniversary of her murder.

"I took this on with trepidation," Leadbeater said. "But we are here to make a difference."

In the six months since the bill was first voted on, opposition has only grown more vocal. Leadbeater feels it personally when MPs whom she hoped would support her have moved against the bill. And the attacks, particularly on social media, have become more personal.

When she voted, Leadbeater said she would think about a lay preacher with terminal cancer she met in Yorkshire - Pamela - who spoke of how she believed that the God of her own faith did not want suffering prolonged.