Three MPs quit the main opposition Labour Party’s frontbench team on Wednesday in protest over leader Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle in which a string of critics lost their jobs, highlighting deep divisions.
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Her appointment came as part of a reshuffle which saw Mr Corbyn sack two senior figures for “disloyalty” and install a Trident opponent in the key shadow defence brief, as he seeks to get a grip on his top team.
The former shadow defence spokesman said there had been “nothing straightforward or honest” about the way the reshuffle had been carried out and claimed Labour was being run in a “very top-down” manner.
The Shadow Chancellor’s comments further stoked the civil war which threatens to engulf Labour in the wake of Mr Corbyn’s frontbench shake-up.
Angela Smith, MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, tweeted that the sacking of shadow secretary for Europe Pat McFadden “smacked of insecurity and intolerance”.
Earlier on Tuesday Michael Dugher announced he had been sacked from the culture brief, with uncertainty still surrounding the fates of shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn and shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle. At least nine members of the shadow Cabinet then expressed disappointment that Dugher was removed.
Mr Corbyn denied overseeing a “revenge reshuffle”, describing the changes to his front bench team as “an alteration”.
“When an individual like that has been singled out for a sacking for words that I completely agree with I think it’s only the honourable thing for me to do tender my resignation”, he said.
The Labour Party is undergoing a review of its policy on Trident, which would have been chaired by Eagle and former mayor of London Ken Livingstone, who is also a Trident-sceptic, but will now be led by Livingstone and Thornberry.
“He has recognised the mandate that Jeremy Corbyn has with our members, an overwhelming mandate, and he’ll recognise his leadership on this issue”.
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. Corbyn, he said, had taken them as a personal attack.
On Hilary Benn, who was tipped to lose his seat as shadow foreign secretary, but who will stay in post on the understanding he toes the line publicly with the leader on foreign policy, he said: “I’ve had lots of conversations with Hilary Benn and we get on fine”.
Corbyn also appears to want to make it easier for Labour to join a political coalition with the Scottish National Party, which shares his anti-nuclear views and whose policies are more left-wing than recent Labour ones.
“What we have got to remember is Jeremy has inherited a Parliamentary Labour Party well to the right of the membership”.
He said: “I haven’t been muzzled”.
“I’m afraid they haven’t respected that leadership election result”.
He added: “No one forces them to kill innocent people in Paris or Beirut”.
McDonnell said Mr Corbyn was trying to “hold everyone together but be very clear about our direction of travel in terms of policy”.
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“But don’t underestimate the determination of the Labour Party to achieve on housing, achieve on social justice, achieve on a developing economy, achieve on manufacturing”.
