Another day, another Labour drama. Now a second parliamentarian involved in a rather distasteful WhatsApp group has been suspended after former minister Andrew Gwynne was sacked at the weekend over his rather strange message exchanges. It transpires that Oliver Ryan, MP for Burnley, has this afternoon had the whip removed after it emerged he was also in the ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ group chat, with the 29-year-old Labour politician admitting he too made comments ‘which I deeply regret and would not make today’.
News broke on Saturday that Gwynne had been sacked from his health minister job and suspended from the Labour party after some rather odd message exchanges came to light. As revealed by the Mail on Sunday, after a 72-year-old local resident got in touch with Gwynne’s constituency party to complain about her bin collection, the MP 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.’ And there’s more: screenshots also show Gwynne saying someone ‘sounds too Jewish’ and ‘too militaristic’ and the MP also made sexist comments about Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner performing a sex act. Lovely!
Gwynne’s sacking has resulted in a mini reshuffle, with Ashley Dalton MP replacing him as health minister, while Douglas Alexander MP will, alongside his role as business and trade minister, also serve as minister in the Cabinet Office. And there could be more change yet if Gwynne and Ryan remain suspended. Meanwhile housing minister Matthew Pennycook told Sky News on Sunday that ‘there’s an investigation taking place into the whole event’. Oo er.
Could there be some by-elections in the near future? Watch this space…
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