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.
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Corbyn, the veteran socialist elected leader in September, sacked two of his spokesmen and demoted his defence spokeswoman, who favoured retaining Britain’s nuclear deterrent in opposition to his own views, during a reshuffle that took three days.
The ongoing turmoil in the Labour Party was fully on display yesterday, amid the fallout from Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle.
Resigning his job on live TV this afternoon, Mr Doughty said: “Fundamentally I agree with everything Pat McFadden said”.
Mr Jones accused Mr Corbyn of “undermining” Maria Eagle, who was moved to culture in the reshuffle because of her opposition to scrapping Trident.
He told the journalists in Westminster: “This building – keep it a secret – is full of people that speak at great length on lots of things and so I sat in my office until midnight two nights running…”
Jonathan Reynolds and Stephen Doughty quit over the sacking of the shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden. Shadow culture secretary Michael Dugher was also pushed out because of public criticism of Corbyn.
The former cabinet minister – a driving force behind reforms to the party in the 1980s and 1990s and at the heart of New Labour’s spin operation – said Mr Corbyn would use “spurious” rule changes to force through the switch.
Given the reshuffle, Cameron said Corbyn “couldn’t run anything”, let alone the government.
Benn kept his job as Corbyn tried to forge unity with the party’s more moderate members, but three junior ministers in Labour’s “shadow cabinet”, which mirrors the government, resigned over their differences with the leader.
Early this morning, the Labour leader and Islington North MP appointed Islington South and Finsbury MP Emily Thornberry as shadow secretary of state for defence.
In a parliamentary debate last November following the attacks on Paris by militant Islamic gunmen, McFadden said that placing the blame for terror attacks on western foreign policy risked stripping those who carried out such attacks of their responsibility.
He said he could not “endorse the world view of the Stop the War Coalition”, which Jeremy Corbyn chaired.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon used the chaos to claim that Labour was a threat to national security.
In a surprise move, Labour’s shadow foreign minister, Hilary Benn, tipped by many as a prime candidate for dismissal, got to stay in his position.
The former shadow Europe minister was apparently confronted with a “charge sheet” of disloyalty including an interview on Sky News’ Murnaghan programme in which he criticised Mr Corbyn for taking part in Conservative Party Conference protests.
“I’m afraid they haven’t respected that leadership election result”.
The PM replied: “I have the greatest sympathy with anyone who has been flooded and we have to do what it takes to get to people and get communities back on their feet”.
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Mr Corbyn said: “We have a Freedom of Information Act which is very, very important because freedom of information is essential in any democracy if you are to hold to account those that exercise authority, power or administration”.
