Andrew Gwynne and Oliver Ryan were stupid and offensive, but why on earth are police getting involved?

When I first rocked up to Parliament nearly a decade ago, as a lowly researcher to an MP, I was given sage advice by an older colleague called Dave.

“Never put anything in a WhatsApp group that you don’t want to end up on the front page of the Daily Mail”, he urged.

MPs Andrew Gwynne and Oliver Ryan could have done with someone like Dave in their lives before the Mail on Sunday revealed they were part of a colourful WhatsApp group, set up by Gwynne, called “Trigger Me Timbers”.

It was presumably named as such because the offensive content in it – which reads like a digital equivalent of the burn book from noughties classic film Mean Girls – would likely be “triggering”.

In a discussion about an upcoming Labour meeting, a member of the group asked whether the late American psychologist and conflict management expert Marshall Rosenberg would be attending. Gwynne responded: “No. He sounds too militaristic and too Jewish. Is he in Mossad?”

Oliver Ryan, now the MP for Burnley – who worked for Gwynne as well as being a local councillor – also made off-colour comments.

Discussing the 2019 Peterborough by-election – where Labour’s candidate was revealed to have liked antisemitic Facebook posts, including one that claimed Theresa May had a "Zionist slave master's agenda" and that Mossad created ISIS – Ryan said he would “eat his hat” if Labour won.

After Labour’s narrow victory, Ryan joked: “[I] won’t eat my Shtreimel then. Or Kippah, it’ll have to be a cowboy hat or something.”

The dodgy and offensive comments weren’t just about Jews. Gwynne, Ryan and a bunch of local councillors were equal opportunity offenders.

Gwynne mocked veteran left-winger Diane Abbott when she became the first black MP to represent the party from the dispatch box at Prime Minister’s Questions.

“Black History Month apparently”, he quipped before suggesting that “Desmond Swayne or Justin Trudeau” – the Tory MP and the then- Canadian Prime Minister, who were found to have blacked-up in the past – might have been better choices.

“F*** your bins. I’m re-elected and without your vote. Screw you. PS: Hopefully you’ll have croaked it by the all-outs”, Gwynne vented about one pensioner he found annoying.

The Times reports that Ryan, himself openly gay, apparently engaged in “homophobic banter” and made rude comments about a lifelong lollipop man – also a Labour member.

Both MPs have since issued grovelling apologies.

Gwynne has lost his job as Health Minister; he and Ryan have been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party pending an investigation and 11 councillors in the Greater Manchester Boroughs of Tameside and Stockport – areas which covered Gwynne’s former seat of Denton and Reddish – have also been suspended by Labour.

But it has now also transpired that Greater Manchester Police has recorded a "non-crime hate incident" and that “we are in contact with our Parliamentary liaison as part of our initial enquiries."

I’m not trying to defend Gwynne, Ryan or the councillors, but seriously, haven’t the police got better things to do than worry about the distasteful comments of a few politicos?

Are our streets so safe that we don’t have to worry about robbers, violent offenders or regular racist chants by mobs on our streets that the police have nothing better to do but spend time on an inappropriate – and what the culprits thought would be private – chat?

Of course, as a journalist covering Westminster, I’m not exactly complaining that I have plenty more material to write stories about.

In fact, I’d put money on this not being the only WhatsApp-centred scandal we see over the course of this Parliament.

I know for a fact that Gwynne and Ryan are not the only MPs to be part of political group chats where fruity language and insults about their rivals have been uttered. Although, for now at least, theirs is the only one where someone has leaked the content of it to the papers.

Huge swathes of parliamentary business – officially or unofficially – is done via the app. It really is a feature of Westminster life.

Be it MPs staffers organising which canteen on the parliamentary estate to meet up for lunch in, MPs of a particular faction or party grouping to discuss ideas or organise for key votes, or – like Gwynne’s – for MPs to gather key people in their local constituencies and organise ahead of elections – both against rival parties and to secure internal positions within local parties.

Some of these will, naturally, involve the odd expletive or rant about a person or issue and should these be leaked to the press, the people who uttered them will likely face questions.

Few will think this is unfair, and many will argue that politicians deserve the scrutiny and criticism they get.

After all, we pay for their wages and have every right to demand the highest possible standards from our elected representatives.

But most of us would be either lying or actual saints if we could genuinely – hand on heart – say that we’ve never in our lives ever sent a message that would have strayed from Dave’s advice.

Another thing I’d put money on is that if every MP submitted their phones for examination by the Press Gallery, then we’d find more than the odd headline or story involving a highly suspect comment (former Health Secretary Matt Hancock found this out the hard way when he gave journalist Isobel Oakeshott access to his archive of texts).

Gwynne and Ryan were right to apologise, and it remains to be seen how long they’ll remain suspended from the Labour Party.

It is on them to prove that their apologies are genuine and that the views they expressed are what President Trump would have classified as “locker room talk”, rather than their sincerely held opinion.