“There’s a familiar pattern in Westminster these days,” said Katy Balls in The Guardian. “An MP writes in haste a message to colleagues on WhatsApp. The contents leak to the press. Then there’s embarrassment, a public ticking off or – if really bad – the sack.”
This time it’s Health Minister Andrew Gwynne facing the fallout. The Mail on Sunday exposed a secret Labour WhatsApp group called Trigger Me Timbers, where Gwynne allegedly posted a crude “joke” about a 72-year-old constituent: “Dear resident, Fuck your bins. I’m re-elected and without your vote. Screw you. PS: Hopefully you’ll have croaked it by the all-outs.”
He’s also accused of making sexist comments about Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and racist remarks about Labour veteran Diane Abbott. Eleven Labour councillors in the group have since been suspended.
Scandal ‘not so different’ from Tory sleaze
The scandal is “grist to the mill” for critics who argue that this government “isn’t so different to the Tory sleaze that dominated the Conservatives’ final years”, said Balls.
“No so-called ‘honourable member’ of Parliament should even think of some of the sentiments expressed in the leaked messages,” said Isabel Oakeshott in The Telegraph. It’s “abhorrent to talk about ordinary voters” with such “naked contempt”. And sharing such “ugly opinions” suggests a “permissive attitude towards these views” within sections of the party.
‘Get off WhatsApp’
The messages certainly “sound shocking with all context removed”, said Gareth Roberts in The Spectator, “but they are clearly not what he actually thinks”.
Understanding “the lore behind the average WhatsApp chat” would take hours for an outsider. These are exchanges within a “trusted, private circle” that, once public, appear “deranged, unfunny, and appallingly tasteless”. If “making horrible jokes in private is a sin, we are all damned”.
That said, if “nobody comes to their senses” on this issue, MPs have one solution open to them: “just stop” and “get off WhatsApp, now”.