A suspended Labour MP is preparing to sue the party for discrimination, claiming he was the victim of a coordinated smear campaign that targeted his mental health.
Karl Turner, who rebelled against Keir Starmer’s government in a row over jury trials, alleges that senior party figures weaponised his history of mental health struggles to undermine his political standing.
The former shadow attorney general claims he has raised the issue directly several times with the Prime Minister, who he says has never responded.
His legal threat exposes a deep internal rift within the Labour Party and highlights the often toxic culture in Westminster between MPs and their party whips who are responsible for keeping them in line.
The dispute spilled into the public view on the floor of the House of Commons during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.
Turner, who was suspended at the end of March over his opposition to plans to curb jury trials, publicly challenged Starmer over “hostile briefings and smears”.
He accused the Prime Minister of knowing about negative briefings and “allowing them to happen” at a time when he was campaigning against the Government’s plans.
In the Commons on Wednesday, Turner, the MP for Hull East, said: “Did the Prime Minister reflect on those hostile, discriminatory briefings, which he knew about and he allowed to happen?”
Starmer replied: “I want to be absolutely clear that nobody should be smeared in relation to mental health… And I will do everything I can to make sure that is the position.”
Cabinet dragged into the row
In an interview with The i Paper, Turner tells the full story behind this extraordinary exchange with the Prime Minister, including how he spent nine days in a mental health hospital in 2016 after his nephew Matty, a junior barrister, took his own life, and how other members of the Cabinet have been dragged into the row.
According to Turner, the first indication that his mental health was being impugned came in autumn last year when he attended a meeting with Jonathan Reynolds, the Chief Whip. It was not long after Turner had first voiced his opposition to David Lammy’s plans to curtail jury trials for all but the most serious cases.
“The Chief Whip told me he was worried about me being mentally ill… and I just flipped and told him to f**k off. I told him the fact that I am opposed to jury trial curtailment doesn’t mean I am mentally ill, it just means I am principled.”
At the time, Turner thought no more about it, but in the days ands weeks that followed, he claims he was approached by several MPs, senior party figures and journalists enquiring about his mental health.
“One MP came up to me and said: ‘Are you alright darling? I’m worried about you’ And I asked what they meant and they said: ‘Well, I’ve been told you’re not well’.”
Turner claims that during this period he raised the issue several times directly with the Prime Minister in text messages. In one message he says he queried how the party could attack Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party for putting out a statement which made references to Suella Braverman’s mental health, when the party was making similar claims in private about Turner’s mental health.
“I told him that we couldn’t be coming out attacking Kemi Badenoch for briefing against Suella’s mental health when that’s what’s been happening to me,” Turner said.
He claims he never received a response.
Turner asked Chief Whip to help stop the briefings against him
In January, Turner sent his first legal letter to the Chief Whip, which was copied to the Prime Minister, and the entire Cabinet. In it he demanded that the briefings against him, in particular any assertions or implicit suggestions about failing mental health, stop. He also reminded him about the risk of discrimination on mental health grounds.
Several Cabinet ministers responded to him to offer Turner their support, but he says that did not include the Prime Minister.
Turner is particularly aggrieved by his silence on the matter.
“Me and Keir had conversations over the years about Matty and about criminal law and about the pressures on criminal lawyers, especially young criminal lawyers… and he was incredibly sympathetic.”
Turner, who is still seeing a therapist, is open about the struggles he has faced with his mental health.
He claims he had two “breakdowns” – the first almost 10 years ago after Matty – the nephew he had raised as his own son – died.
When Turner’s older brother died, Matty was 11. He took him in at 12 and encouraged him to go into law. Turner proudly watched him qualify as a barrister and practise in London, where Matty lived with him.
Two weeks after moving out of Turner’s flat in 2016, Matty took his own life. Turner said his grief unravelled quickly and he sought inpatient treatment, although he was never sectioned.
The second episode came last year, in early 2025, when he was impacted by family related stress. This time, however, he was not hospitalised.
“I spent five hours at King’s Cross station because I couldn’t get on the tube from King’s Cross to Parliament,” he says. Turner says he was suffering with suicidal thoughts at the time.
Although friends say they are still worried about Turner, he categorically rejects claims that he is still unwell.
Turner said all he initially wanted was an apology for the way some at the top of his party has treated him, but now he is determined to take it further. His barrister has told him his discrimination claim under section 50 of the Equalities Act could be worth £90,000. If he wins it, he claims, every penny will go to Dove House, the hospice in Hull and East Yorkshire where his father died.
It is understood that no evidence has been provided to the Government Whips’ Office to substantiate Turner’s allegations, despite requests, and the Labour Party has not yet received a pre-action letter. He was also pointed towards the party’s formal complaints process. The whips have repeatedly offered support.
Mental health ‘should not be used as a weapon in politics’
The deeper aim, Turner says, is to stop mental health being used as a weapon in politics. He says he is doing it “not for me, but for others” who suffer in silence in public life. He says he’s conscious of the irony that the alleged briefings ran on through Mental Health Awareness Week, even as the leadership spoke publicly about the importance of wellbeing.
Ask him how it has left him feeling, and the answer is not what you expect from a man considering a lawsuit. “Not angry,” he says. “Sad. Really, really sad.”
He still believes in the Labour Party as “a vehicle to gain” power for the people he represents. But not, he says, under its current leader. “Under Keir Starmer’s leadership, tragically, it’s never going to happen, because he’s been the person who has blocked all of the transparency that’s needed” to put it right.
On Wednesday – under the protection of parliamentary privilege – Turner said in public what he had spent months saying in private and put the question about the smear campaign he believes has been waged again him to the Prime Minister directly, where, he says, it could not be denied.
But even that did not put an end to the matter. As Turner walked past the front bench as Prime Minister’s Questions concluded, the Chief Whip is alleged to have shouted: “That was disgraceful.”
The Justice Secretary then came between the pair before Turner left the chamber.
Following the dramatic exchange, Turner tweeted a message he had received from the Chief Whip.
It read: “As this is my personal number, I want to make clear you do not have permission to contact me on it ever again. If you do not respect this, please note I will block your number.”
No 10 and the Whips’ Office declined to comment.
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