Jeremy Corbyn sacks Europe spokesman Pat McFadden

This reshuffle was seen as an opportunity for Corbyn to reassert his authority, to restore a sense of unity among his battered ranks.

Mr Doughty, the MP for Cardiff South and Penarth, was appointed as a shadow Foreign Minister by Jeremy Corbyn in October 2015.

The defence brief is taken by Emily Thornberry, who is in line with the leader on Trident.

Since Labour entered opposition in 2010, Eagle has also held the positions of shadow transport secretary and shadow secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs.

Labour’s elected deputy leader Tom Watson led a chorus of senior figures bemoaning the “loss” of Mr Dugher, a close ally of former prime minister Gordon Brown, from the shadow cabinet.

Both Mr Doughty and shadow rail minister Jonathan Reynolds stood down from their party roles over Mr Corbyn’s treatment of Mr McFadden.

He said: “I’ve just written to Jeremy Corbyn to resign from the frontbench”.

Mr Corbyn had hoped to bring his tortuous reshuffle to an end with the announcement of the new shadow cabinet line-up in the early hours of this morning. “He knew our views on the nuclear deterrent”.

Benn’s friends said that in two lengthy meetings, over Monday and Tuesday, Corbyn never raised the possibility that the shadow foreign secretary should leave his post.

The sources insisted Eagle was keen to move to the shadow culture role from defence and was happy with her shift sideways.

He said there had been “nothing straightforward or honest” about the reshuffle.

Mr Jones is MP for the North Durham constituency, which he has represented since 2005.

But many Labour lawmakers see his leadership style as ineffectual, his policies as out of touch with voters’ views and his commitment to party reform as hollow.

JEREMY CORBYN can draw strength from this week’s messy front bench shake-up, his supporters said yesterday amid a flurry of resignations from “unknown” junior spokesmen. “But clearly the front bench is geographically a little bit unbalanced now”.

As well as replacing Eagle, Corbyn sacked his shadow culture secretary Michael Dugher and shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden for what Labour sources said were displays of “incompetence and disloyalty”. “But they do all come from a sort of narrow rightwing clique within the Labour party”.

He cited his criticism of the leader at a rally in Manchester as part of the political misdemeanours brought up by Mr Corbyn in a discussion on why he was firing him.

Corbyn’s position could ultimately be decided by Labour’s performance in upcoming local and regional elections in May.

“It really seems impossible to go on like this”, he said, but “those divisions will go on and on” because Corbyn “doesn’t have enough people from the hard left with him” in parliament. She wanted to stay in her job, he said. She received a £14,500 donation from the firm between September 2013 and March 2014 to pay for a legal research assistant for her office when she was shadow Attorney General.

It has been referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over allegations – which it denies – that it destroyed a key document at the centre of an inquiry, which eventually found claims of murder and torture by British soldiers were “completely baseless”.

Despite the controversy Miss Thornberry defended Leigh Day as an “outstanding firm of solicitors” and said it was not up to lawyers to decide “whether or not what their clients were saying was correct”.