This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

It's a long-standing staple in first year university philosophy class: just how representative of the will of the people should a functioning democracy be?

Clearly, we’re long past the stage when ‘our betters’ sat in parliament deciding what is best for us whilst we humbly and quietly bowed to their wisdom. World War Two killed that nonsense off.

On the other side of the balance sheet, evidently, parliamentarians are there to add some caution and measure to the will of the people. Whilst we may wish for policy X to be enacted, parliamentarians are elected to ensure that policy X becomes law in an orderly, measured fashion.

If we accept those two points - that parliamentarians do not know better than us, and exist to enact our will in a reasonable way - then it is hard to look upon the rejection of the assisted dying bill at Holyrood as anything other than a distinctly undemocratic moment in recent Scottish history.

An opinion poll on behalf of Dignity in Dying Scotland which canvassed the views of more than 4000 people across the country found that around 80% of the Scottish people support assisted dying legislation. Polling also shows huge support in every Scottish constituency and region, rising as high as 87%. 

Yet, 69 of the 129 MSPs at Holyrood believe they do know better than the majority of Scots, and so can bat public opinion away as if it is of no consequence.

This unedifying moment was topped only by the crowing of the fundamentalist religious right in Scotland about their ‘win’. 

Nobody wins in matters of life and death. In this case, there is certainly no win for those who are terminally ill and wish to end their suffering, or their loved ones who must watch them linger in pain when they long only for release.

You would think that so-called Christians would know better than to gloat where the dying are concerned. 

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But then experience so often proves that those unencumbered by religious dogma have more humanity in a little finger than many so-called believers can muster throughout their entire lives. 

These are the same devout characters, after all, who mock empathy and sneer at what they call the ‘Be Kind Brigade’. 

A special place in hell, and all that.

Still, you cannot expect better from that crowd. You can, though, expect better from Scottish democracy.

Not only do four-fifths of the entire country support assisted dying, the bill itself was safeguarded to the hilt. It was the most stringent legislation of its kind ever proposed anywhere on Earth.

Claims that people with mental or physical disabilities were going to be somehow rounded up and coerced into killing themselves were as absurd as they were sick. This was a moral panic of the worst order: idiotic fear-mongering by cheap propagandists.

Yet the majority of our parliamentarians fell for it. They make Holyrood look like the Lilliput parliament: a small chamber filled with small people; a place of negligible intelligence and even less courage.

There’s a rather choice irony to the fact that in the same week as the Reform Party said it was gunning for Holyrood’s powers, the Scottish Parliament showed itself incapable of exercising those powers as the people wish. 

Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur during the vote for the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill in the Scottish Parliament (Image: Jane Barlow)

Of course the assisted dying bill was complex and controversial, but people of wisdom, guts and integrity would have worked on it until any concerns were addressed and the will of the people could be respected.

That MSPs failed tells us all we need to know about the quality and character of the majority of those who believe they rule over us. It demands this question be answered: do they even care about trying to respect the will of the Scottish people?

England is going through a similar, though slightly different, failure by parliamentarians to reflect public opinion. Whilst the House of Commons has passed its assisted dying bill, the Lords is stalling on the issue to such an extent that the legislation could run out of time and fall.

English elected representatives show more democratic integrity than their Scottish counterparts. In Scotland, MSPs mimic the behaviour of the Lords.

Yet more indignity was to come in Scotland, though. A day after MSPs voted down assisted dying legislation, they passed a law banning greyhound racing in Scotland.

Wonderful, you may say. However, the bill is entirely pointless. Scotland’s last greyhound racing track closed last year. Our MSPs voted to ban something which no longer exists. We may as well ban the burning of witches. 

Would these events not make another worthy discussion in philosophy class? A nation which does not act to end the suffering of living human beings, yet instead legislates to end the non-existent suffering of animals.

Is this what we are? A country which values dogs more than people? It seems so.

It is not hard to understand why there are some folk who simply wish the Scottish Parliament would disappear. 

It is a shivering and pathetic little assembly at times, afraid of its own shadow, scared to upset powerful lobby groups, and more interested in maintaining the status quo than daring to build a better society.

In fairness, the parliament has enacted legislation which more than justifies its existence. I would cite the Scottish Child Payment and its amelioration of child poverty as just one very important example.

But a few brave, forward-thinking laws do not compensate for a culture of cowardice, nor for the flouting of the will of 80% of the Scottish people.

Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, extremism, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics

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