Yesterday Health Minister Andrew Gwynne was sacked from the Government and suspended from the Labour Party over alleged prejudiced comments that the MP called “badly misjudged”. Today it was Oliver Ryan’s turn. Members must be wondering: are there more to come?

Gwynne, MP for Gorton and Denton, lost his Government job and the Labour whip following a Mail on Sunday report alleging he had made multiple highly offensive comments about constituents, Diane Abbott and Angela Rayner in a private WhatsApp group.

In one alleged message, Gwynne said he hoped a 72-year-old woman would soon be dead after she wrote to her local councillor about bin collections. He also reportedly suggested someone sounded “too Jewish” and asked if they were in Mossad.

In response to a tweet that Gwynne’s alleged remark was an example of Corbynite hatred of Jews, Aaron Bastani of Novara media wrote on X: “Gwynne backed Owen Smith in his bid to remove Corbyn as leader in 2016. He endorsed Starmer in 2020… He’s a member of…Labour Friends of Israel.”

Asker for her reaction to Gwynne’s comments about her, Diane Abbott said, “I wouldn’t want to say I’m surprised.”

Daine is no stranger to offensive remarks about her from her own colleagues. When the Forde Inquiry, established by Labour’s National Executive Committee in May 2020 to investigate the explosive contents of the 860-page Leaked Report into the functioning of the Legal and Governance Unit, finally reported over two years later, it found that some of the attitudes expressed towards Abbott in private WhatsApp messages among Labour staffers hostile to Jeremy Corbyn represented “overt and underlying racism and sexism”.

The Forde Report pointed to ongoing problems with Labour’s internal culture, including racism. The lack of action against key staffers allegedly involved may have contributed to a continuation of that culture elsewhere in the Party. The content of alleged WhatsApp messages so far revealed certainly suggests a sense of entitlement and immunity on the part of the authors.

Today, reports Labour List, “a second Labour MP has been embroiled in a row over a WhatsApp group where hateful messages were exchanged.”

Oliver Ryan, MP for Burnley, was, according to the Daily Mail, another member of the ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ WhatsApp, who made cruel remarks about a local Labour leader and took part in “homophobic banter”. He is under investigation by the Labour Party over his comments, which were made during his time as a councillor for Tameside Council and prior to his election to Parliament. Ryan has since apologised.

More to come

More revelations may yet emerge. It is thought that the ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ WhatsApp group in which the allegedly sexist and racist messages appeared also includes nine serving councillors on Denton Council among its more than 40 participants. “Those among the group – including current Tameside Council cabinet members Cllrs Claire Reid, Allison Gwynne – who is chair of the overview panel, and Jack Naylor – may now be reviewing their actions,” reports one local newspaper. It is believed members of Stockport Council are also involved in the WhatsApp group.

These latest revelations will be embarrassing for Keir Starmer who last month lost Treasury Minister Tulip Siddiq. She resigned following growing pressure over an anti-corruption investigation in Bangladesh, which is looking into claims that her family embezzled up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in the country.

This week’s revelations will be doubly embarrassing as some of the individuals in the WhatsApp group now under investigation by the Party were prominent supporters of the Labour to Win faction, expressly set up to support the Starmer leadership and fight the left in the Party at all levels. Those who believe sexist, racist or homophobic remarks have no place in our Party will be watching closely to see if senior Party officials will be tempted to ‘protect their own’ in their investigation.

Petition

Meanwhile, voters have launched an online campaign calling for the resignation of disgraced MPs Andrew Gwynne and Oliver Ryan and the ousting of councillors who were members of the ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ WhatsApp group. A petition – which already has nearly 500 signatures on the change.org site – calls for a “full, independent and urgent investigation into the MPs and Denton ward councillors involved in the group where racist and sexist comments were allegedly made.”

Image: Andrew Gwynne MP. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrew_Gwynne_MP,_Labour_Party_UK.jpg Author: Sophie Brown, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.