The first shot in the British Labour Party’s civil war was fired last night when leader Jeremy Corbyn fired (or they say in Britain, sacked) Shadow Europe Minister Pat McFadden for saying that no one forces terrorists to kill innocent people.
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On a turbulent day for the Labour Party, the ex-Shadow Rail Minister was followed off the frontbench by Stephen Doughty and Kevan Jones, Cardiff South and Penarth and North Durham MPs respectively.
He said Mr McFadden and his allies, including the three shadow ministers who resigned in protest at his sacking, had distorted what Mr Corbyn told him on the telephone and had toured the airwaves to repeat their “lies”.
Corbyn did move his shadow defense secretary, Maria Eagle, who favors the renewal of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent.
Corbyn, the surprise victor of Labour’s leadership election previous year, has been at the centre of a prolonged controversy since last week as he mulled over a reshuffle, which ended with the firing of shadow culture secretary Michael Duhger and shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden.
Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn retained his post, but reportedly only after he agreed to muzzle himself over policy differences with the Labour leader.
Labour said yesterday that MP Emily Thornberry would replace defence spokesman Maria Eagle.
Several Labour shadow cabinet lawmakers have openly disagreed with Corbyn and his positions during his four short months at the helm – especially in foreign and defense policy issues like intervention in Syria and the UK’s nuclear weapons.
Speaking at a lunch for regional journalists, Mr Corbyn said it had been “like playing multi-dimensional chess”. You start off with a chessboard and that’s fine, then you realise you are actually playing a game on a parallel board as well, and then you suddenly find there is a third board down the road.
Mr McDonnell said that though the National Policy Forum feeding into the Party Conference decides policy under Labour rules, he hoped that the party’s National Executive Committee “on this issue will decide whether that process will appertain to the decision on Trident or whether or not there will be a new consultative process … they haven’t made their mind up on that”.
“Some shadow cabinet ministers had got into the habit of regularly attacking the elected leadership, tipping over into abuse”, the source said.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said the reshuffle showed Labour was a threat to national security.
A spokesman said: “I’ve stopped predicting how long these things take”. Can one not carry out their position perfectly, but if they criticise the leader’s actions or take a faction that isn’t Ultra Left?
“I very much hope that this is a low point in the Labour Party’s history that we improve from”.
“Jeremy needed to be confident in someone who was in a major political brief”, McDonnell, a close Corbyn ally, said of McFadden. Is it going to be invading more countries in the Middle East?
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To celebrate the party now having its “most equal top team ever”, Labour even got two women from Labour to comment on the great news.
