The other "nasty party"

Andrew Gwynne's leaked comments in the Labour-right "Trigger me Timbers" WhatsApp group demonstrate the same bullying and nastiness as the Labour Leaks.

The Labour health minister Andrew Gwynne has been sacked as a minister and suspended from the party a series of vile messages in a WhatsApp group of right-wing Labour politicians called "Trigger Me Timbers" were leaked to the press.

In the group Gwynne said he hoped an elderly constituent would die before the next set of elections; made racist remarks about Diane Abbott; shared a sexualised image of Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner; and complained that somebody's name was too Jewish-sounding.

Despite some truly desperate efforts by mainstream media hacks to paint Gwynne as some kind of Corbynite, he's nothing of the sort.

He supported Owen Smith during the spectacularly failed Anyone But Corbyn coup in 2016; supported Starmer's duplicitous leadership campaign in 2020; and was one of Wes Streeting's picks to help him carve the NHS open for even more privatisation profiteering.

The best any of these professional liars can come up with to try and paint Gwynne as a lefty-Corbynite is that he served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, but if that’s the minimal standard of proof required, surely that makes Keir Starmer a Corbynite leftist too, since he had a much more central and visible role in Corbyn’s leadership than Gwynne?

And if Gwynne was really some kind of Corbynite leftie, does anyone really believe that he’d have been anywhere near Starmer’s cabinet, let alone a minister in the department run by a raving right-wing fanatic like Wes Streeting?

Anyone who paid attention to the Labour Leaks knows that the kind of vile attitudes expressed by Gwynne are absolutely commonplace on the Labour-right. Racism, sexism, bigotry, bullying of Labour Party members outside of their right-wing faction ... it was all there to see for anyone who cared to look into it.

The Labour-right are a vicious pack of bullies, and as far as many of them are probably concerned, Gwynne's only "crime" was getting caught putting into writing how they also feel about constituents and Labour-left figures.

But now that he’s been caught, they seem quite happy for their pals in the media to paint him as some kind of radical Corbynite leftist.

He’s getting cooked for saying what most of them probably agree with, so why not rewrite history completely and stick a Jeremy Corbyn badge on him as they shove him under the bus of public opinion?

Then there's the rest of the members of this horrible WhatsApp group to consider.

Nobody else’s comments have been revealed to the public yet, but it’s hard to believe there’s not more filth in a group with a name like "Trigger Me Timbers". It wouldn’t be at all surprising if journos are holding onto more vile comments from other Labour politicians in the group, for future ammunition.

Even if by some miracle there’s no more bigotry and bullying to be found there, the fact Gwynne’s horrible comments took literally years to come to light makes it clear that they all just let his bigotry, sexism, antisemitism, and abuse slide.

It just goes to show that these disgusting attitudes are so commonplace that nobody even thought to object.

Meanwhile Starmer and his goons have spent the last five years purging the Labour Party of genuine left-wingers for "crimes" like opposing child poverty; talking to a film director at a local event about films; ignoring Stalinist diktats about what they’re allowed to debate; and being Jewish critics of Israeli atrocities.

Labour right-wingers were happy to pretend to the public that Starmer's ideological purges were necessary to "clean up the Labour Party", while dirty troglodytes like Gwynne were welcomed into Starmer’s top team, despite having spewed their bigotry and abuse in insider chats.

If it wasn’t already clear from their policies under Starmer (attacking disabled people, mugging pensioners, rabble-rousing against migrants, forcing children to grow up in poverty …), it’s clear from the WhatsApp chats they assumed would stay private.

There are some truly nasty people in the party, especially the faction that’s taken control of it.

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