LONDON — Private messages rarely stay private. It’s a lesson British politicians are learning the hard way.
Westminster is in the middle of another self-inflicted messaging storm after a minister was sacked over a host of pre-government swipes on WhatsApp that ended up splashed across the front pages.
The Meta-owned platform is part of Westminster’s lifeblood. It’s invaluable for quick communication and gossip — yet those making cheap jibes in leaky group chats do so at their peril. No wonder the Scottish government banned the whole thing on government phones.
POLITICO runs through five times British politicians realized that, once a WhatsApp is out there, it can never be erased.
Andrew Gwynne
Gwynne is the latest victim of Westminster’s group chat addiction.
The veteran Labour MP found himself suspended from the party — and sacked as health minister this weekend after grim messages he posted in a group made their way into the Mail on Sunday.
Gwynne took an… unusual approach to community engagement, reportedly making jokes about a constituent being “mown down” by a truck, and wishing that a voter who complained about their trash cans would just “croak.”
The paper also reported that Gwynne made incendiary comments about Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Labour MP Diane Abbott, the first black woman elected to parliament.
Gwynne has said he regrets his “badly misjudged” comments.
Oliver Ryan
The new Labour MP for Burnley was also in the same group chat — called “Trigger Me Timbers” — as Gwynne.
Ryan’s messages were sent before he was elected to Parliament last July — but, according to the Mail, appear to show him mocking a fellow Labour MP’s sexuality and denigrating the vice chairman of the local Labour Party.
Ryan has already apologized, saying he “would not make” those comments today and apologizing for not proactively speaking out against other remarks made in the channel. At time of writing, he remains a Labour MP, but is due to have a crunch meeting with Labour’s chief whip Alan Campbell, who monitors the behavior of Labour politicians.
Time on the naughty step could be imminent.
Matt Hancock
Of course, it’s not just Labour politicians embarrassing themselves.
Few could ever rival the WhatsApps of everyone’s favorite camel penis eater.
Hancock — a former British health secretary famed for his stint on grueling outback reality show ‘I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!’ — found himself at the center of a storm when his own biographer decided to leak his WhatsApps to the Telegraph newspaper.
Hancock said he had wanted to “frighten the pants off everyone” to ensure compliance with Covid-19 rules — and called teaching unions a “bunch of absolute arses.” Nothing like a grown-up approach at the top of government, although Hancock accused the Telegraph of running a “partial, biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda.”
Boris Johnson
Johnson found himself facing intense WhatsApp scrutiny during the U.K.’s Covid-19 inquiry.
This time, however, it wasn’t for the content of any messages, but because — would you believe it — the top Tory just couldn’t, goshdarnit, find around 5,000 private WhatsApps he sent during the height of the pandemic. He blamed software “somehow automatically erasing” them. Nice and specific.
Slightly more concerning was Johnson, while in office, reportedly contacting the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman via WhatsApp.
Johnson loved handing out his private phone number to many world leaders while foreign secretary. Security breaches? What security breaches?
Basically every Tory MP
Who needs members of the public for a social media pile-on? Just put Tory MPs in a WhatsApp group together and watch sparks fly.
Ahead of their election rout, the Tories battled in regularly-leaked group chats about everything from the then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman saying there is a two-tier approach to policing pro-Palestinian protests in the U.K. to Boris Johnson’s chances of survival.
One Tory, Nadine Dorries, was even thrown out of a group for urging fellow MPs to show “a bit of loyalty” to Johnson. Perish the thought!
There was plenty to lift the spirits though. In one group, despondent MPs warned the party could turn into a “skip fire” and “die.”
“Would the last Tory MP to leave the building please turn off the lights,” asked Simon Hoare in one such cheery account.
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