Ken McLaughlin

Latest book ‘Stigma and its Discontents’ published June 2021

[Ken McLaughlin @kenmclaughlin_]

I was interviewed by the SDP for their podcast on various mental health related things. Available here for anyone interested: https://t.co/KVopjFgggQ

[Ken McLaughlin @kenmclaughlin_]

BOI in Manchester. Details and tickets at link: https://t.co/kL5Zmr5ltM

[Ken McLaughlin @kenmclaughlin_]

@robertj49656592 @GreyhoundBoard @Plaid_Cymru @RPGreyhounds @GreyhoundNewsUK @GreyhoundWeekly @racingaheadmag I write this on proposed ban earlier this year: https://t.co/iAS43rmagc

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

There's a line every free nation must never cross, and Britain is edging towards it with its eyes wide open. David Lammy wants to take a knife to the oldest safeguard in our system: the right of an ordinary man to stand before ordinary people and have his fate decided by peers, not by a state official with a crowded diary and a political brief. He calls it reform. It's nothing of the sort. It's the quiet shift from a country where power is checked to a country where power decides.

Lammy dresses this up as housekeeping – a neat administrative fix for a backlog his own party helped cause. But he knows full well this isn't about courtrooms or timetables. If he wanted to clear the backlog, he could fund the courts, hire judges, rebuild the CPS, and reopen the buildings his party shut. Instead he reaches straight for the one lever no government with clean hands should touch: strip away the jury and tilt the scales in the state's favour. Juries acquit more often because they see through weak cases. Lone judges convict more often because they've heard every excuse before. Lammy knows this. That's why he wants them in the driving seat.

And look at the timing. A government that is already tightening speech laws. A government that wants digital ID and more surveillance. A government that hounds soldiers from decades ago. A government allergic to dissent. Now it wants to sweep away juries – the one thing that stops the state from being judge, accuser, and executioner all at once. The backlogs are an excuse. The prize is unchecked authority.

This didn't happen overnight. Bit by bit, this government has chipped away at the English tradition of liberty and dressed each cut as "modernisation." Now comes the biggest cut of all: remove juries for three quarters of trials and you change the character of the country. You hand Whitehall the power to pick the judge, shape the trial, and close the door behind the accused. You replace public duty with state convenience. You drain the justice system of its one democratic root.

This is the path nations take when they stop trusting their own people. The path where the state decides it must protect itself from the public rather than the other way around. The path where the ancient right to be judged by one's peers becomes an inconvenience in need of "updating." And once that right is gone, it does not return. No government gives back a power this useful.

Lammy isn't fixing a backlog. He's clearing the way for the kind of justice system every authoritarian dreams of: the state accuses, the state tries, the state convicts. The jury – the citizen – is cut out. That is the future hidden behind his smooth words.

Britain isn't China or North Korea – not yet. But the road bends that way. And unless this country pushes back now, it will wake to find it has crossed the line that once kept it free.

"Lammy isn't fixing a backlog. He's clearing the way for the kind of justice system every authoritarian dreams of: the state accuses, the state tries, the state convicts."

[Ken McLaughlin @kenmclaughlin_]

@aitchtb Been a bit poorly today Henry 😀🤪 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[Ken McLaughlin @kenmclaughlin_]

Looking forward to chairing this discussion in Dublin on November 22nd. I’ve gone all international 😀☘️ All welcome for the session and the day if you are in the area:

https://t.co/PctcclLNv3

[Ken McLaughlin @kenmclaughlin_]

@Rozanska It’s Alastair’s @Dr_psychiatry book we’re discussing Krysia

[Ken McLaughlin @kenmclaughlin_]

And I’m excited to be discussing this alongside Alastair and Stella O’Malley. All welcome.

[Alastair Santhouse @SanthouseA]

Very excited to speaking at the Battle of Ideas Festival next weekend, about the significant rise in mental health diagnoses, why it’s happening and what to do about it.

It’ll be a great discussion. Please do join us @acadofideas @Fox_Claire

https://t.co/AbYl3VN1xe

[Ken McLaughlin @kenmclaughlin_]

Hot off the French press 🇫🇷

[Ken McLaughlin @kenmclaughlin_]

One day to go if you want to attend and applaud or heckle me. As a teaser my answer to the question will be Yes, and No. Further details on the night.
https://t.co/c1ZqmUjxMJ

[Paul Thomas @PaulThomas89]

Reminder for the next Leeds Salon – “Are We Overdiagnosing Mental Health Problems?” – with academic and writer @kenmclaughlin_ and @UniversityLeeds Prof of Psychology Bridgett Bewick. Wed 14 May @Carriagworks (Room 4), 7pm - 8:30pm. See details at https://t.co/uB8lO1YsK0

[Dan T. Copeland @Self_Made_Dan]

Ah yes, protests for "trans rights." The only demonstrations where men can proudly and publicly assemble in #ParliamentSquare to call for women to be killed.

Signage I saw from the ground on Saturday that you won't see covered by the news:

[Steve Hall @ProfHall1955]

Chibber is right. 'Calling out' racism and sexism amongst the working classes is a delicate task in itself, but when middle-class 'progressive liberals' institutionalise and weaponise their criticism to threaten livelihoods in a precarious labour market at the same time as failing to promote alternative economic policies, a drift of some to the nationalist right is inevitable. https://t.co/hbBNVUBhQQ

[spiked @spikedonline]

'The fight against gender ideology was a fight against the establishment. The media refer to male rapists as women. Labour and the Tories initially backed self-ID. Even gay groups would pretend that men can be lesbians'

Andrew Doyle on the TERFs' triumph:
https://t.co/msvDSi0mBh

[Talk @TalkTV]

Baroness Fox says too many people were "thrown under the bus" over incorrect definitions of what is a woman.

"We coerced people into going against material and biological reality with the political cost of destroying people's careers and reputations."

@ThatAlexWoman

[fireworks and confetti @fworksconfetti]

From The Guardian, 11 April 2025 (emphasis in bold/italic by me)

"I have been an NHS psychiatrist for 50 years and have witnessed the increasing dominance of disease classification among my colleagues. Once we know what the patient has “got”, the less interest there is in how they reached this point. As things stand, even with far greater numbers of specialists, our model of care would not be fit for purpose. (Does the UK have a mental health overdiagnosis problem?, 5 April). We have a problem with overdependence on diagnosis.

"The case of schizophrenia – the archetype of 20th-century psychiatry – is instructive. One of our foremost clinical scientists, Prof Sir Robin Murray, said: “In the last two decades, it has become obvious that child abuse, urbanisation, migration, and adverse life events contribute to the etiology of schizophrenia and other psychoses”, adding that “my preconceptions had made me blind to the influence of the social environment”. This courageous confession exposes the tip of an iceberg of indifference to the developmental origins of mental disorder, which has impoverished the curiosity and imagination of the besieged workforce that so many are waiting to meet."

Dr Sebastian Kraemer
Tavistock and Portman NHS trust

[spiked @spikedonline]

In Britain in 2025, you need a licence to hand out leaflets, you can be arrested for looking at your neighbour and can be fined for standing in a group. We are no longer free citizens, says Josie Appleton
https://t.co/opDnfMXejF

[Michael Brown 🌍 @MentalHealthCop]

One of the stupidest things during my service was the creation of "new" criminal offences for things which were already criminal offences and the political virtue signalling which accompanied it.

Here we go again.

[Ashley Frawley @AshleyAFrawley]

@MikeTylerSport Exactly. It's frustrating. @kenmclaughlin_ and I have written about this.

https://t.co/2aFnOqYKns

[Ken McLaughlin @kenmclaughlin_]

If you’re around the Leeds area on 15th May why not come to this. Supporters and hecklers welcome: https://t.co/c1ZqmUk5Ch