Andrew Gwynne has every right to rant in private

‘Dear resident, fuck your bins. I’m re-elected and without your vote. Screw you. PS: Hopefully, you’ll have croaked it by the [local elections].’

This was just one of the many eyebrow-raising WhatsApp messages that now seem to have brought an end to Andrew Gwynne’s political career. This weekend, the Mail on Sunday revealed that, from 2019 onwards, the MP for Gorton and Denton shared numerous offensive comments in a WhatsApp group, made up of Labour figures in Greater Manchester. The unearthed messages have led to accusations of just about every ‘-ism’ and ‘-phobia’ under the Sun. They include an allegedly ‘sexist’ dig at UK deputy PM Angela Rayner, a ‘racist’ jibe about former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, a joke about a man with a Jewish-sounding name being a member of Mossad, and one message where Gwynne wishes a local cycling campaigner would be run over by an HGV, among other un-PC outbursts.

Following the MoS exposé, Gwynne was sacked as a health minister and suspended from the Labour Party. Other Labour figures in the same WhatsApp group, including at least one MP, have also been placed under investigation. There are growing calls to have Gwynne ousted from parliament and even arrested for his jokes. Indeed, the daughter of a local council leader, who was mocked in the WhatsApp group as ‘Colin Cumface’, has reported Gwynne to the police, as has another local councillor.

I would be lying if I said I’m not enjoying the Schadenfreude of the Andrew Gwynne affair. A pious, hectoring Labour MP being exposed as a hypocrite is always going to make for delicious tabloid fodder. After all, this is the same Andrew Gwynne who once cheered on the cancellation of the late Roger Scruton for supposedly racist and sexist comments. Nevertheless, it is important to maintain the principle that no one should be punished for off-the-cuff remarks that they make in private – and yes, that includes politicians.

Some commentators have argued that Gwynne’s comments deserve punishment because they will undermine trust in politics. There’s no doubt some seem to confirm our worst suspicions about the political class. In particular, his ‘fuck your bins’ missive about a Stockport pensioner oozes a contempt for the electorate we suspect most politicians of harbouring. His outbursts invite us to think that MPs who signal their virtue are probably not all that virtuous after all.

That may all be so, but there are good reasons to call a halt to the punishment beatings that Gwynne is now enduring.

What is ultimately at stake here is whether we can maintain a private sphere, where people can have open, honest and unfiltered conversations, without worrying what the rest of the world will think. This is not just about debating policy and political tactics behind closed doors, before a more refined party line or considered view can then be presented to the world. All people – and politicians included – need a place to blow off steam. To vent their frustrations and emotions.

Nowadays, ‘transparency’ is often held up as an unimpeachable good. But just consider what politics would be like if there was no expectation of privacy at all. Everything that was once confidential, from WhatsApp chats to cabinet meetings, would be turned into a mere performance. Politicians would be unable to express themselves openly. They could never be frank or forthright about the challenges their party or the country faces – ever. Ironically, politics without privacy would make our leaders even more dishonest than we suspect them of being today.

Even more alarming than the cancellation campaign against Gwynne is the possibility that the police might get involved. David McKelvey, a former Metropolitan Police chief inspector, has urged Greater Manchester Police to investigate the MP’s WhatsApp messages as potential hate crimes.

Unfortunately, there are precedents for this, albeit ones that relate to much more offensive forms of speech than Gwynne managed. In 2022, two police officers were jailed for sending racist and obscene messages to each other in a private WhatsApp group (their sentences were upheld by the High Court last year). Two men were imprisoned in 2021 for sharing a video of a racist rant about Priti Patel, the then UK home secretary, in private Snapchat groups. Thanks to the UK’s hate-speech laws, expressing yourself in private can now be a risky business.

Defending privacy should not be confused with a demand for privacy laws. We certainly don’t need new rules and regulations to spare politicians’ blushes from newspaper scoops. What we need is to rediscover the distinction between public and private. That means accepting that different settings have different standards, and that private utterances made in jest should not be judged as if they were public statements.

By all means, let’s criticise Andrew Gwynne’s WhatsApps, but let’s not destroy his career or criminalise him for them. The more the principles of privacy and freedom of speech are undermined, the more damage will be done to public life.

Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.