Karl Turner: 'A little bit of me wanted Boris Johnson to stay as Prime Minister'

After the dramatic events in Westminster this week, Karl Turner has a confession - a small part of him wanted Boris Johnson to remain as Prime Minister.

“Being honest, I did a little bit,” says the Labour MP for Hull East in reference to the potential electoral help such an outcome would have provided to the Opposition.

“But when you think about the bigger picture and the fact the Government is literally paralysed and people deserve to have a Government that is functioning you then realise, when you’ve seen through the political advantage, that what you actually need is to get rid of this lying, cheating, dishonest charlatan who frankly was never fit to be Prime Minister in the first place.”

Turner, who has been an MP since 2010 after replacing John Prescott in the constituency, concedes that Labour need to start setting out some core policy positions after spending much of the past few months focusing on why Mr Johnson should not be Prime Minister rather than their own offer.

“I think that’s a fairly reasonable question and a fairly reasonable criticism of the Labour Party. But in defence of Keir Starmer I think we are coming together with policy discussions.

“We will have a number of policies to offer the British public when we get to a General Election but I wouldn’t expect the Leader of the Opposition to state every single policy he intends to go to the country with two years ahead of an election.

“This Government is dishonest and they will spin and lie about what any cost to any policy might be.”

Turner says Starmer intends to come up with properly-costed policies because he is “cautious in a good way”.

“I think we are on the right track,” he says. “I spent 35 minutes with him on Wednesday having a chat about my concerns about policy areas and it was a very constructive discussion.

“One of the things I’m suggesting is that we come up with a manifesto for areas like mine - specific to areas like mine. If we want to make this levelling up thing real and proper we need to be saying this is specific to Hull, this is specific to Wakefield, this is specific to Doncaster.

“It needs to say these are the issues that are causing real problems and we need to unlock the potential in these areas and these are the ways to do it.”

Turner says he would like to see major improvements to bus services in Hull as well as a grant scheme to pay for home insulation work.

“We have got something like 200,000 properties in Hull, 90 per cent of which are identified as not having anything like enough insulation. Now if you have a scheme where you can insulate those homes on a Government grant, whether privately owned or rented, that will take a fair few quid off utility bills.”

Another issue Turner is passionate about is the state of the criminal justice system. Although no longer Labour’s Shadow Minister for Legal Aid having served in the post up until October last year, Turner has been taking a close interest in the barristers’ strike, having been one himself prior to becoming an MP.

Earlier this week, he raised the issue in Parliament as he questioned when a promised £135m of extra Government cash for legal aid funding would actually be delivered.

The money was pledged following an independent review by former judge Sir Christopher Bellamy last year who recommended a 15 per cent rise in fees as “the minimum necessary”.

But the changes are not coming into place until at least the end of September and the Criminal Bar Association argues that rises should be backdated and a 25 per cent increase is required to prevent an exodus of junior barristers from the profession.

While experienced barristers can earn £65,000 per annum and above after three or more years of practice, those in their first 12 months take home a median of only £12,800, rising to £23,700 in their second year.

Last year, the Bar Association reported 22 per cent of junior barristers had left the profession since 2016.

The CBA says “return work” sees criminal barristers picking up cases they have no professional obligation to accept, but do so on behalf of colleagues who are tied up elsewhere as a gesture of goodwill to prop up the justice system. But this is often for little or no reward in return.

With years of training required to qualify in the first place, Turner says the situation is having the effect of reducing who can afford to enter and stay in the profession and having an impact of access to justice for victims of crime and the accused.

“Working-class people who have done degrees and left university with £50,000 or £60,000 worth of debt can’t afford to pursue a career in publicly-funded work. They have to go into commercial law to pay the bills and the debts. You are not going to get working class people, you are not going to get black and ethnic minority people going down that route.

“What’s worse than that, those people are not coming through the ranks and becoming full-time judges once they have proved themselves.”

Turner says while he is supportive of the CBA’s concerns, his current advice is for their strike action to be put on hold due to the paralysis in Government.

“What was needed with the barristers issue was an immediate injection of £135 million quid which Bellamy said was the smallest amount of money required to save the criminal justice system.

“Now, that was supposedly an immediate amount of money. The Treasury set that amount of money aside. So the money’s there, but the government messing around deliberately, in my view, to try and avoid paying that money over any time soon.

“There’s no way civil servant and government ministers are in a position frankly to settle this dispute. So my advice to the Criminal Bar Association for now would be to suspend the action, suspend the action on the basis that it will continue as soon as the Government are in a position to make a decision on all of this stuff. The Government is absolutely paralysed across every department.”

Turner says the current situation where such issues cannot be resolved demonstrates why Conservative MPs must act to ensure Boris Johnson leaves office as soon as possible.

“Boris Johnson thinks he can squat in Downing Street when effectively nothing in Government is going to happen. Civil servants are not going to want to sign anything off, Ministers, if he manages to get enough ministers, are not going to get anything done.

“Knowing Boris Johnson, I think he would be minded to try and persuade his Parliamentary party to give him another bite of the cherry.

“He is capable of doing absolutely anything. He needs to be leaving Downing Street forthwith.

“The Tories need to get him out of there fast.

“If they can’t manage that the Labour Party have got to come forward next week with a motion which effectively says the House has no confidence in the Government which would trigger a general election.

“Let’s see what the Tories do about that because the way matters stand is the only way of getting Boris Johnson out of there is Conservative MPs, who up until recently didn’t seem to have anything like a backbone.”

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