I am opposed by the plans to reduce trial by jury however if if triggers a by-election it will give us a by-election. The Times report

A Labour MP has made an extraordinary attack on Sir Keir Starmer’s planned jury reforms, threatening to trigger a by-election unless they are dropped, as he revealed he was once falsely accused of a crime.

Karl Turner, the former shadow solicitor general, said he was “ashamed” of the prime minister and David Lammy, the justice secretary, and called on them to “stop these ludicrous proposals and get on with the hard job of sorting out the criminal justice system”.

The government has said it will drop juries in trials for offences with a likely prison sentence of three years or less. The ability to appeal a magistrates’ court verdict to a crown court will also be limited.

Last week, Turner, MP for Kingston upon Hull East, broke the party whip for the first time since his election in 2010 to vote against the proposals. He was the only Labour MP to oppose the government and back a Tory motion.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, he said he was “not fearful of having the whip removed” — and he has warned the whips he would consider triggering a by-election to make his “principled point”.

He claims his own experience of the criminal justice system led him to take up the fight, which he says he is confident of winning. Forty Labour MPs have already signed a letter urging the prime minister to reverse the plans, which they describe as “an ineffective way of dealing with the crippling backlog in cases in our criminal justice system”. Legislation has not yet been drafted.

Turner revealed he was charged with handling stolen goods when he worked as an antiques dealer in Hull in 2002. Although the case collapsed, he said the judge warned him there was “no smoke without fire”. The Labour MP believes that as a “working-class kid from a council estate”, he was lucky — and had it gone to trial he would have been dealt with more fairly by a jury than a judge. Juries are seen as a filter for prejudice due to their diverse demographic make-up.

Whilst I would expect either a Reform gain or a Karl Turner indepdent hold if he stood either would present a huge problem for Sir Keir Starmer.

One of the many reasons that Tory MPs ousted Boris Johnson was being forced to vote for something very unpopular then Boris Johnson changed his mind making Tory MPs look like numpties, for example the Owen Paterson censure vote, Sir Keir Starmer has removed the whip from MPs for voting against a policy only for Sir Keir’s government to u-turn, so a victory for Karl Turner will likely trigger another u-turn. The tipping point for the end the premiership of Liz Truss was a chaotic vote u-turn.

But if Labour get shellacked in a by-election and finish a distant place behind the Greens and the Lib Dems then that might be the tipping point for Labour MPs to act.

I suspect this potential by-election would be seen more principled and kindly than the 2008 David Davis vanity by-election, as a lawyer Karl Turner’s will be seen as more principled stand, particularly as he is on the governing side rather than the opposition.

TSE