Diane Abbott: ‘What WhatsApp scandal says about how Labour sees its voters’
Andrew Gwynne MP and his WhatsApp discussion group has exploded into the news. The group traded racist, sexist and generally abusive messages. It was so bad that as soon as the national Labour Party heard about it they sacked him from his ministerial position.
Other MPs, councillors and Labour Party members who were part of the group have also been suspended. Angela Rayner was abused by the group and she said Andrew “set the culture” in that WhatsApp group. “He was the MP. He had been the MP for many years and he not only fostered that culture, he allowed it.”
Angela was subject to sexist abuse and I was subject to racist abuse on that WhatsApp group. Knowing you are being abused as a black person behind your back is never a nice feeling. It is made worse if it is a Labour colleague.
Reflections on the Forde report
Sadly, racist remarks behind my back have been a feature of my years as an MP. Sometimes people have come to tell me. But in the era of WhatsApp, people are committing their unpleasant thoughts to writing.
In 2022, the Labour Party published a report it had commissioned from barrister Martin Forde on allegations of bullying, racism and sexism within the Labour Party. In it he quotes from the WhatsApp of the Labour Party’s senior management team.
Amongst other things, they said: “[Diane Abbott] literally makes me sick”, I am “truly repulsive” and “a very angry woman”. Martin Forde observes “The criticisms of Diane Abbott [in the senior management team WhatsApp] were expressions of visceral disgust drawing (consciously or otherwise) on racist tropes and they bear little resemblance to the criticisms of white male MPs elsewhere in the messages.”
READ MORE: WhatsApp row: 11 north-west Labour councillors suspended on top of MPs
At least Gwynne apologised for his remarks. Nobody from Labour’s senior management team has ever apologised to me and far from losing their jobs some of them have gone on to bigger and better jobs.
But Gwynne and his friends were not just negative about me. They were also derisory and unpleasant about ordinary local people. For instance, in a mock reply to a resident Gwynne said in the WhatsApp “Dear resident, fuck your bins I am re-elected and without your vote. Screw you.p.s. Hopefully you will have croaked it before the local elections”. He also describes a voter as a “hag” who lived in a “s**t house”.
‘It’s that attitude that has eroded the Labour vote in what were once rock solid Labour seats’
It is possible to excuse Gwynne’s unfunny WhatsApp remarks as banter. But it is banter with a consistent tone. It reveals a dismissive and even contemptuous attitude to the voters.
And it is precisely that attitude and taking local voters completely for granted that has eroded the Labour vote, in what were once rock solid Labour seats, often in former mining districts or manufacturing hubs.
These areas, where historically parties other than Labour made hardly any impact, are now seeing a rising Reform vote. The Labour Party leadership is now in a panic about the rise of Reform.
It believes the correct response is anti-immigrant politics. But neo-Reform rhetoric and endless talk about “stop the boats” only echoes and legitimises the far-right narrative and in the end if all Labour does is that, then why would not people vote for the real thing?
The reality is that at least part of the reason that the Labour vote had long started to crumble, in what were once its heartlands, is decades of the attitude to voters reflected in the WhatsApp messages between Gwynne and his friends.
I did not like the remarks that Gwynne and the others made about me on WhatsApp. But more important is that Labour Party representatives like Gwynne treat Labour supporters, including black supporters, with respect even when they think that nobody is listening
Offensive WhatsApps: How many more?
FEBRUARY 10, 2025
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.
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