Jonathan Reynolds has been told to “respect the mandate” of Jeremy Corbyn, just hours after he announced his decision to resign from the Labour Shadow Cabinet.
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Shadow railways minister Jonathan Reynolds, shadow foreign affairs minister Stephen Doughty and shadow minister for the armed forces Kevan Jones resigned in protest over the sackings today.
The leadership said Mr McFadden was sacked for comments he made in the Commons after the Paris outrages when he attacked the Left-wing view shared by Mr Corbyn that Western interventions in the Middle East provoked terrorist attacks.
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, described the shadow junior ministers who had resigned as a “a narrow rightwing clique”.
“I can not in good conscience endorse the worldview of the Stop the War Coalition who I believe to be fundamentally wrong in their assessment and understanding of the threats the United Kingdom faces”, he said, referring to the anti-war organisation formerly chaired by Mr Corbyn.
The changes he made see anti-Trident MP Emily Thornberry replacing shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle, who moves to culture to replace sacked Michael Dugher.
Corbyn, a veteran left-wing activist, was elected party leader after the election by tapping into a desire for change among grass-roots party members.
Ms Thornberry defended her suitability for the defence role and said it was “nonsense” to suggest she had been brought in to help shift the party’s stance on Trident.
The appointment of Jo Stevens to Labour’s shadow justice team has been strongly welcomed in the party’s Welsh ranks after this week’s bruising reshuffle.
All the focus was on whether Corbyn would sack Benn, with rumours swirling that if he was axed, other centrists would quit the shadow cabinet en masse.
The removal of pro-Trident Defense Secretary Angela Eagle in favor of anti-nuke MP Emily Thornhill is seen by some as a move towards disarmament.
He added: “I feel the best way to do this is to not to be a member of the Labour frontbench at this time, which would then allow me to have more freedom to engage in these arguments”. “It led to a million people – nearly all of them innocent civilians, men, women and children – being killed”. Corbyn, he said, had taken them as a personal attack.
McDonnell said Mr Corbyn was trying to “hold everyone together but be very clear about our direction of travel in terms of policy”.
Corbyn had been under pressure by his allies to take control of Labour, which has struggled to challenge the ruling Conservatives.
Moderates fear moves to purge them gradually from the party on Corbyn’s watch. That electoral disaster prompted the resignation of leader Ed Miliband, and a subsequent flurry of leadership bids followed by the shock emergence of the far-left Corbyn as the victor, sweeping nearly 60 percent of the votes.
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Speaking to the BBC’s Daily Politics programme, Livingstone said that as the man in charge of Labour’s defence review, he was going to look at whether Britain should withdraw from a military alliance that has pretty much defined Britain’s military presence in the world for the past 60 years.
