Burnley MP Oliver Ryan suspended by Labour over messages on WhatsApp group

Mon, 10 Feb 2025, 16:40
Full Content
Full article content available

The Labour MP Oliver Ryan has been suspended by the party over his membership and comments on a WhatsApp group that featured offensive messages, including alleged racism and sexism.

The party took action against the Burnley MP after the emergence of details about the Trigger Me Timbers group, mainly involving a group of councillors and party activists in Greater Manchester.

A Labour spokesperson said: “As part of our WhatsApp group investigation, Oliver Ryan has been administratively suspended as a member of the Labour party.

“As soon as this group was brought to our attention, a thorough investigation was immediately launched and this process is ongoing in line with the Labour party’s rules and procedures. Swift action will always be taken where individuals are found to have breached the high standards expected of them as Labour party members.”

Ryan met Labour’s chief whip, Alan Campbell, on Monday afternoon. Being suspended from the party means he automatically loses the Labour whip in the Commons.

Andrew Gwynne

was sacked as public health minister

on Saturday and also lost the whip after it was reported that he used the group to joke about hoping an older constituent who had complained about bin collections would die before the next election, and to make comments about Angela Rayner, Diane Abbott and others.

More details soon …

AI Model Selection

Avg. Response: 10.0s

Llama3.2:1b

Meta
Default
Size: 1B
Success Rate: 100.0%

Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct-GGUF

Meta
Size: 1B
Success Rate: 100.0%
All models run locally on our servers. Response times may vary based on server load.