My way or the highway, Corbyn tells tweaked Shadow Cabinet after night of the blunt knives

So in the end, Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet reshuffle wasn’t the wide-ranging purge some had anticipated it would be. The Labour leader has sacked two people – Michael Dugher and Pat McFadden – moved Maria Eagle, promoted Emily Thornberry, and told Hilary Benn to toe his line. The Labour leader sacked McFadden as Shadow Foreign Office Minister for the same reasons that he dispatched Dugher: the MP had criticised the leader in public. Or did he? McFadden asked David Cameron the following question after the Paris attacks:

‘Can I ask the Prime Minister to reject the view that sees terrorist acts as always being a response or a reaction to what we in the West do? Does he agree with me that such an approach risks infantilising the terrorists and treating them as children, when the truth is they are adults entirely responsible for what they do. No one forces them to kill innocent people in Paris or Beirut and unless we are clear about that, we will fail even to be able to understand the threat we face, let alone confront it and ultimately overcome it’.

Seems reasonable, no? Terrorists are to blame for terror. But at the time, everyone knew what McFadden meant. He was referring to Stop the War, the organisation that Jeremy Corbyn formerly chaired, and he was deliberately distancing himself from STW’s comments – later deleted – about the Paris attacks. Corbyn saw this as direct dissent, though as McFadden just challenged him to do on the Today programme, it would be interesting to hear what the Labour leader actually disagrees with in the comments his sacked colleague made in the Chamber. Hilary Benn, meanwhile, has reportedly been told that he cannot take different positions in public from the Labour leader. This sounds fair enough, but how long can Benn really last in the job now that he doesn’t have the pressure valve of being able to say what he thinks? In appointing Emily Thornberry, who was unfairly sacked by Ed Miliband, the Labour leader has put two anti-Trident politicians at the head of his defence policy review. This is a signal that party policy will change. And what then will happen to the five or six members of the Shadow Cabinet who support Trident renewal? Maria Eagle, according to John McDonnell, has always wanted to be Shadow Culture Secretary. What Corbyn has done is to stop the open discussion in the Shadow Cabinet that he boasted about at the Labour party conference. It sounded so nice, but those with experience in government and opposition were sceptical that you could really have such a loose collection of views at the top of a party that allegedly wants to get re-elected. He has not gone for the revenge purge – something his aides insist was never briefed to the media anyway – but he has said that from now on, it’s his way or the highway. Chances are that over the next year, a number of those Shadow Cabinet members who didn’t have to put into action their threat of mass resignations will nevertheless decide that the highway now looks better. This is Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet:

Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party

Jeremy Corbyn MP

Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Party Chair and Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office

Tom Watson MP

Shadow First Secretary of State, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills

Angela Eagle MP

Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

John McDonnell MP

Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Seema Malhotra MP

Shadow Home Secretary

Andy Burnham MP