British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has fired Health Minister Andrew Gwynne following the revelation of offensive WhatsApp messages written by the Labour minister, who has also been suspended from the party.
Following Gwynne’s dismissal in the wake of an expose by the Mail on Sunday, he tweeted: “I deeply regret my badly misjudged comments and apologize for any offense I’ve caused. I’ve served the Labour Party all my life and it was a huge honor to be appointed a minister by Keir Starmer.”
One of the texts followed a question directed at Gwynne or a group in which Gwynne was a member regarding whether Marshall Rosenberg, a Jewish-American psychologist, would attend a Labour meeting. “No, he sounds too militaristic and too Jewish. Is he in Mossad?” wrote Gwynne.
The Labour minister also appeared to mock concerns about antisemitism, writing, “Geoffry the Giraffe says don’t be nasty to the Jews.”
In other texts, Gwynne mocked residents who wrote to Labour politicians with requests. Gwynne wrote about imagining one such person getting “mown down” by a garbage truck. He also allegedly wrote of fellow Labour politician Dianne Abbot, who is black, that she would be promoted because it’s “Black History Month.”
“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,” read a statement from Starmer’s office.
Under Starmer, dozens of Labour members have been expelled from the party due to alleged antisemitism. Starmer has vowed a zero-tolerance policy to antisemitism following widespread claims that his predecessor, radical left-wing politician Jeremy Corbyn, let Jew hatred proliferate in the party’s ranks under the guise of criticism of Israel.
