Following the revelation of racist and sexist messages by The Mail on Sunday, a Labour Minister has been dismissed from his position. One of the messages in question expressed a despicable wish for a pensioner who did not support the Labour party to pass away before the next election.
Andrew Gwynne also made anti-Semitic slights and ‘jokes’ about a constituent being ‘mown down’ by a truck on a WhatsApp group.
Upon learning about the content of the messages, the Prime Minister promptly removed Mr. Gwynne from his role as Health Minister and suspended his Labour Party membership.
A spokesperson for the Government stated that the Prime Minister is committed to upholding high standards of behavior in public office and is dedicated to serving the working people. Any minister who falls short of these standards will face consequences, as seen in this instance.
In one particularly shocking comment, the Gorton and Denton MP says he hopes a 72-year-old woman will soon be dead after she dared to ask about her bins.
The Stockport resident wrote to her local councillor saying she hadn’t voted Labour, but added: ‘As you have been re-elected I thought it would be an appropriate time to contact you with regard to the bin collections.’
After the councillor shared the letter among fellow Labour figures in the WhatsApp group, Mr Gwynne wrote a suggested response: ‘Dear resident, F*** your bins. I’m re-elected and without your vote. Screw you. PS: Hopefully you’ll have croaked it by the all-outs.’
Andrew Gwynne made a post saying he hoped a pensioner who didn’t vote Labour would die before the next election
Mr Gwynne made anti-Semitic slights and ‘jokes’ about a constituent being ‘mown down’ by a truck on a WhatsApp group
‘All-outs’ are elections at which every council seat is contested at once, in contrast to local authorities in which only a third of seats are up for grabs at each poll.
The messages were exchanged in a group called Trigger Me Timbers, which Mr Gwynne shares with more than a dozen Labour councillors, party officials and at least one other MP, all based on the outskirts of Manchester.
The MoS gained access to thousands of messages from the closed group, which was set up in 2019, and discovered a barrage of abusive texts. Among them are:
lMr Gwynne saying someone ‘sounds too Jewish’ and ‘too militaristic’, apparently from their name alone;
lRacist comments about veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott, mocking her historic achievement in be-coming the first black MP at either Despatch Box for Prime Minister’s Questions;
l Sexist comments about Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner performing a sex act;
lMr Gwynne mocking a local Labour leader as ‘Colin C*mface’.
The politician also make offensive remarks about Jewish people. Discussing a Labour meeting in Reddish, a member of the group asks if Marshall Rosenberg would be there. It appears to be a reference to a late American psychologist whose conflict management techniques might have been useful in heated Labour debates.
Mr Gwynne responds: ‘No. He sounds too militaristic and too Jewish. Is he in Mossad?’
In 2018, Mr Gwynne made headlines when it was revealed he was in Facebook group called Labour Supporters in which anti-Semitic messages were shared.
At the time he responded: ‘I was added to this Facebook group without my knowledge or permission. I DO NOT support the posts and I ABHOR anti-Semitism. It has absolutely NO place in the Labour Party or in society. End of.’
The Prime Minister stripped Mr Gwynne of his job as Health Minister and suspended his membership of the Labour Party when he was told about the content of the messages yesterdayÂ
But months later, he was taking part in anti-Semitic banter in the WhatsApp group, including taking an apparently mocking tone to those who thought it inappropriate. ‘Geoffrey the Giraffe says don’t be nasty to the Jews,’ he posted. It’s not clear who he was referring to, but Geoffrey was the logo of the Toys R Us stores.
Alex Hearn, co-director of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said asking if a person with a Jewish name is an agent of the Israeli spy agency Mossad feeds to an enduring anti-Semitism trope of Jews being infil-trators.
He said: ‘This so-called ‘banter’ about Jews was unnecessary and unpleasant. Themes of disloyal infiltrators crosses the line into classic anti-Jewish racism, and should not be acceptable discourse among Labour officials, activists or anywhere in our society.’
Mr Gwynne also made race-based jokes on Trigger Me Timbers while talking about veteran black Labour MP Diane Abbott, when she stood in for Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons in October 2019.
In the historic move, she became the first black parliamentarian to represent their party at the weekly clash, and it was wildly hailed as a pioneering moment.
When one member asks if this groundbreaking moment for black Britons was a ‘joke’, Mr Gwynne told the group it was ‘because it’s Black History Month apparently.’
A councillor then suggests other black Labour MPs, living and dead, asking: ‘Was David Lammy not available? I’d also take the corpse of Bernie Grant.’
Mr Gwynne adds: ‘Or Desmond Swayne? Justin Trudeau??’
The Gorton and Denton MP said he hopes a 72-year-old woman will soon be dead after she dared to ask about her bins
At the time, both Tory MP Swayne and the Canadian prime minister were engulfed in racism rows after photos of them with them faces blackened in racist caricatures had emerged in two separate incidents.
Bishop Desmond Jadoo, a prominent black campaigner and director of the Windrush National Organisation, said: ‘It’s amazing when a black person rises to prominence, they have to put up with these outrageous comments.
‘These comments have racial connotations that have no place in our society. Diane Abbott is a trail blazer, and because she became the first black person to stand at PMQs, we now have a black woman – Kemi Badenoch – at PMQs. If a Minister has these kinds of views, then they should take stock. There is no such place in our society for such views.’
Angela Rayner was also mocked by the group, particularly by Mr Gwynne.
In March 2021, when, the Deputy Labour leader faced criticism for claiming £249 Apple wireless headphones on Parliamentary expenses, Mr Gwynne reposted a tweet by a so-called parody account going by the name Tammy Pax MP.
The tweet read: ‘I don’t see what the problem is. It’s literally impossible to give a blow*** while wear-ing wired headphones. Anyone with a similar background to Angela would understand this.’
Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called ‘Nick’ who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: ‘That Nick is something else.’
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: ‘I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he’s cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn’t be that lucky!’
The MP also mocked a senior party figure in Tameside called Colin Bailey, 61, the vice-chair of Audenshaw Labour branch.
In January 2019, appearing to reference a local party victory, Mr Gwynne asked: ‘How did Colin C*mface take it?’ He added later: ‘Can we post the Colin C*mface Tory supporting tweets now?’
A shocked Mr Bailey – who has campaigned for Mr Gwynne in the past – told the MoS yesterday: ‘I am angry about this, if this is directed at me. Andrew never said anything like this before.’
Nigel Huddleston MP, co-chairman of the Conservative Party, said: ‘These comments are sickening. It is shameful that a Labour Minister thinks it is appropriate to wish for the death of one of his own constituents – especially as his government has cruelly taken away Winter Fuel Payments and left vulnerable pensioners to freeze, and just goes to show how out of touch Labour are.’
And David Sedgwick, the councillor who posted a photo of the letter from the pensioner about the bins, said of Mr Gwynne last night: ‘His comments were totally not acceptable’.
Mr Gwynne has been in politics since 1996, when he was elected as England’s youngest councillor at the age of 21.
He became an MP in 2005, and after last year’s General Election was appointed Minister for Public Health and Prevention. He was previously Shadow Minister for Public Health and for Social Care.
At the time he made the insulting comments about the pensioners in May 2021, Mr Gwynne was championing female pensioners in public, as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for state pension inequality.
Two months earlier, he took to social media to say that the WASPI women who were born in the 1950s and hit by changes in the pension age ‘have faced injustice after injustice as the Government have sat with their fingers in their ears. No more ‘computer says no’ from Ministers, we need action now.’
A Labour spokesperson said: ‘Andrew Gwynne has been administratively suspended as a member of the Labour Party. We are investigating comments made in this WhatsApp group in line with the Labour Party’s rules and procedures. Swift action will be taken if individuals are found to have breached the high standards expected of them as Labour Party members.’
