A Government spokesman said: ‘The Prime Minister is determined to uphold high standards of conduct in public office. He will not hesitate to take action against any Minister who fails to meet these standards, as he has in this case.’

Mr Gwynne posted on X: ‘I deeply regret my badly misjudged comments and apologise for any offense I’ve caused. I’ve served the Labour Party all my life and it was a huge honour to be appointed a minister by Keir Starmer.

‘I entirely understand the decisions the PM and the party have taken and, while very sad to have been suspended, will support them in any way I can.’

In one particularly shocking comment, the Gorton and Denton MP said he hopes a 72-year-old woman will soon be dead after she dared to ask about her bins.

The Stockport resident wrote to her local councillor saying she hadn’t voted Labour, but added: ‘As you have been re-elected I thought it would be an appropriate time to contact you with regard to the bin collections.’

After the councillor shared the letter among fellow Labour figures in the WhatsApp group, Mr Gwynne wrote a suggested response: ‘Dear resident, F*** your bins. I’m re-elected and without your vote. Screw you. PS: Hopefully you’ll have croaked it by the all-outs.’ ‘All-outs’ are elections at which every council seat is contested at once.

The messages were exchanged in a group called Trigger Me Timbers, which Mr Gwynne shares with more than a dozen Labour councillors, party officials and at least one other MP, all based on the outskirts of Manchester.

The MoS gained access to thousands of messages from the closed group, which was set up in 2019, and discovered a barrage of abusive texts.

The politician also made offensive remarks about Jewish people.

Keir Starmer at a Labour Party cabinet meeting in Salford with Mr Gwynne in 2019

Mr Gwynne also made race-based jokes while talking about veteran black Labour MP Diane Abbott (pictured)

Discussing an upcoming Labour meeting, a member of the group asked if Marshall Rosenberg would be there, in apparent reference to a late American psychologist whose conflict management techniques might have been useful in heated debates. Mr Gwynne responded: ‘No. He sounds too militaristic and too Jewish. Is he in Mossad?’

In 2018, Mr Gwynne made headlines when it was revealed he was in a Facebook group called Labour Supporters in which anti-Semitic messages were shared. At the time he responded: ‘I was added to this Facebook group without my knowledge or permission. I DO NOT support the posts and I ABHOR anti-Semitism. It has absolutely NO place in the Labour Party or in society. End of.’

But months later, he was taking part in anti-Semitic banter in the WhatsApp group, including taking an apparently mocking tone to those who thought it inappropriate. ‘Geoffrey the Giraffe says don’t be nasty to the Jews,’ he posted. It’s not clear who he was referring to, but Geoffrey was the logo of the Toys R Us stores.

Alex Hearn, co-director of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said asking if a person with a Jewish name is an agent of the Israeli spy agency Mossad feeds to an enduring anti-Semitism trope.

He said: ‘This so-called ‘banter’ about Jews was unnecessary and unpleasant. Themes of disloyal infiltrators crosses the line into classic anti-Jewish racism, and should not be acceptable discourse among Labour officials, activists or anywhere in our society.’

The Gorton and Denton MP said he hopes a 72-year-old woman will soon be dead after she dared to ask about her bins

Mr Gwynne also made race-based jokes on Trigger Me Timbers while talking about veteran black Labour MP Diane Abbott, when she stood in for Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons in October 2019.

In the historic move, she became the first black parliamentarian to represent their party at the weekly clash. When one member asks if this pioneering moment for black Britons was a ‘joke’, Mr Gwynne told the group it was ‘because it’s Black History Month apparently’.

A councillor then suggested other black Labour MPs, living and dead, asking: ‘Was David Lammy not available? I’d also take the corpse of Bernie Grant [the black Labour MP who died in 2000].’

Mr Gwynne adds: ‘Or Desmond Swayne? Justin Trudeau??’

At the time, both Tory MP Swayne and the Canadian prime minister were engulfed in racism rows after photos of them in offensive ‘blackface’ caricatures had emerged in two separate incidents.

Nigel Huddleston MP, co-chairman of the Conservative Party, said: ‘These comments are sickening. It is shameful that a Labour Minister thinks it is appropriate to wish for the death of one of his own constituents – especially as his government has cruelly taken away Winter Fuel Payments and left vulnerable pensioners to freeze, and just goes to show how out of touch Labour are.’

And David Sedgwick, the councillor who posted a photo of the letter from the pensioner about the bins, said Mr Gwynne’s comments ‘are totally not acceptable’.

Mr Gwynne has been in politics since 1996, when he was elected as England’s youngest councillor at the age of 21. He became an MP in 2005, and after last year’s General Election was appointed Minister for Public Health.