The Mail on Sunday got hold of some messages Gwynne put in a private Whatsapp group. One of them was a suggested response to a 72-year-old constituent asking about bin collections:
“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.'”
In another message he responded to someone’s name, which ended with ‘berg’: “He sounds too militaristic and too Jewish. Is he in Mossad?” Gwynne also spoke in liberal terms about Diane Abbott and Angela Rayner…
A government spokesperson said: “The Prime Minister is determined to uphold high standards of conduct in public office and lead a government in the service of working people. He will not hesitate to take action against any minister who fails to meet these standards, as he has in this case.” Gwynne says“I deeply regret my badly misjudged comments and apologise for any offense I’ve caused. I’ve served the Labour Party all my life and it was a huge honour to be appointed a minister by Keir Starmer. I entirely understand the decisions the PM and the party have taken and, while very sad to have been suspended, will support them in any way I can.” He’s had his membership suspended too…
Lucy Powell told Sky News that the Ed Miliband-Russell Brand interview happened in part because the ‘social media age’ had not begun by 2015:
“Look, I mean, he approached the Labour Party, he approached the campaign team, and we’re in very different times now. We weren’t in the social media age at the time – where you could maybe search things up and see allegations about somebody at the time. and as I say, if there was any suggestion at all, we were dealing with someone who was a known sexual predator at the time, then, of course, you know, no one would have done that. But as I say, he was a well known public figure. Lots of people from Hollywood to the BBC to many others gave this person a very, very powerful platform. And we didn’t know at the time, unfortunately. It was a different era.”