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.

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