On Wednesday night he reacted angrily to claims by fellow Labour MP Diane Abbott on Newsnight that he, along other Labour MPs who had resigned from the frontbench, was a “career politician” who simply wasn’t used to Jeremy Corbyn’s new style of leadership.
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Barely hours later he was followed by the shadow foreign affairs minister Stephen Doughty, who had earlier expressed his anger over the way Mr McFadden had been treated in a tweet.
Mr Dugher, who was among those who last month backed United Kingdom military action in Syria after Mr Corbyn was forced to allow a free vote, had warned Mr Corbyn he would end up with a “politburo of seven” if he reshuffled left-wing allies into top jobs.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, Corbyn’s closest ally at Westminster, dismissed the three former shadow ministers as members of a “small rightwing clique”.
He said Ms Eagle’s replacement, Emily Thornberry knew nothing about defence and said concerns about her appointment raised by the deputy Labour leader, Tom Watson, had been ignored.
Mr Benn posted on Twitter: “Pat McFadden made an outstanding contribution as shadow minister in arguing the case for Britain’s place in EU”.
Hilary Benn, who had been tipped to be replaced after speaking out for air strikes in Syria, remains as Shadow Foreign Secretary.
Maria Eagle has also been moved from the key defence brief and replaced by Emily Thornberry – known to share Mr Corbyn’s views on scrapping Britain’s nuclear deterrent.
He denied he had been “muzzled” by Corbyn, after reportedly agreeing not to publicly criticise the leader’s policy positions.
He said he would be carrying on with his job “exactly as before”.
Mr Livingstone told BBC Radio London’s Vanessa Feltz: “If you look back at all Jeremy’s rebellions over the years, they were on policy issues”.
Labour backbencher Wes Streeting said he was “gutted” by the news, branding the leadership “a shower”.
6, 2016 Corbyn moved defense spokeswoman Maria Eagle, who opposed him on nuclear weapons, to another post, and fired two other members of his frontbench team who had criticized him.
David Cameron told MPs it “speaks volumes” that Mr McFadden was sacked for such comments.
“Sacked by Jeremy Corbyn for too much straight talking, honest politics”, he wrote, in a direct echo of his party conference speech pledge. “The idea that there are curbs on Hilary’s activities and that he signed up to them as a prerequisite for serving are completely untrue”, a friend of Benn said.
Since Corbyn took over, the party has been split between centrists who broadly identify with the policies of former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and left-wingers, particularly grassroots activists, who voted in Corbyn as leader. This was a reference to McFadden’s remarks on 17 November about the dangers of explaining terrorist attacks as a reaction against western intervention.
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The MP said his differences with the Labour leader on dealing with terrorism were an issue of “substance”.
