Jeremy Corbyn has been publicly attacked by fellow Labour MPs after a shadow cabinet reshuffle which took almost 36 hours.
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Jonathan Reynolds and Stephen Doughty left over McFadden’s sacking, Doughty quitting his junior foreign affairs brief live on BBC television, saying Corbyn’s office had told “lies” about why McFadden had been dismissed.
And then by the shadow armed forces minister Kevan Jones, who said he disagreed with Mr Corbyn on scrapping the Trident nuclear deterrent.
They were furious at the decision to sack shadow ministers Michael Dugher and Pat McFadden, and replace Maria Eagle as Shadow Defence Secretary with Emily Thornberry.
Mr McFadden had warned Mr Corbyn against carrying out a “purge” of moderates, and is understood to have infuriated the leadership with his thinly veiled criticism of Mr Corbyn’s response to the Paris attacks.
Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had been rumoured to be lining a number of high profile changes to his front-bench team with Hilary Benn (shadow foreign secretary) and Maria Eagle thought to have been vulnerable.
Labour MP Ian Austin summed up the reshuffle as Dugher being sacked “for calling for unity”, McFadden “for criticising IS” and Eagle “moved for backing party policy”.
Pat said: “I am delighted with the new role but do not underestimate the size of the job”.
Despite not having been a serving politician since he ended his spell as London mayor in 2008, Mr Livingstone was handed the role of reviewing Labour’s defence policy by Mr Corbyn past year.
Mr Jones said: “Defence has always been an integral part of the Labour tradition, and we should always remember that it is an important issue to Labour communities across the country”.
“I don’t think they’ve really ever accepted Jeremy’s mandate”.
Although many political commentators believe Corbyn is leading Labour into permanent opposition, he intends to offer voters a clear choice against the Conservatives, rather than present what some considered a muddled policy under the previous Labour leader, Ed Miliband, who badly lost the May elections.
“Some shadow cabinet ministers had got into the habit of regularly attacking the elected leadership, tipping over into abuse”, the source said.
Mr Doughty, the MP for Cardiff South and Penarth, was appointed as a shadow Foreign Minister by Jeremy Corbyn in October 2015.
Her berth is taken by Emily Thornberry, who agrees with the leader on Trident.
The former human rights barrister defended Leigh Day – which funded a legal research assistant for her office during her time as shadow attorney general to the tune of £14,500 – as an “outstanding firm”.
“They come from a narrow right-wing clique within the Labour Party, based around the organization Progress”, he told Channel 4 on Wednesday.
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“I just don’t think that’s the best use of money in terms of defending ourselves”. She told the Lancashire Telegraph in October: “When I was younger I was very anti-nuclear weapons. But I don’t regret it for one second”.
