Corbyn Promotes Trident Opponent to U.K. Labour Defense Role

In a sign that deep divisions on the Labour frontbench have not been bridged by the reshuffle, the shadow foreign secretary said he would carry on in his post exactly as he had before.

After days of uncertainty and a reshuffle that dragged on for 36 hours, Jeremy Corbyn has installed a new Shadow Defence Secretary to bolster his front bench team.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell dismissed the trio who walked out as being from “a narrow right-wing clique” who refused to “respect” the result of the leadership election and accept Mr Corbyn’s strong mandate from party members and supporters.

Pro-Trident Maria Eagle was replaced as shadow defence secretary by Emily Thornberry, who shares the leader’s opposition to renewal of the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

Meanwhile, shadow rail minister Jonathan Reynolds and Stephen Doughty, a shadow foreign minister, quit over the sacking of shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden. Ms Eagle was shifted sideways to succeed Michael Dugher, who was sacked as shadow Culture Secretary.

But his four-month tenure has deepened divisions between him and several of Labour’s leading lawmakers, including with Benn, who publicly opposed Corbyn’s position last month by supporting the Conservative government’s Syrian bombing campaign.

Asked for Mr Corbyn’s reaction to the resignations, a senior Labour source said: “He will be thanking those people for their service and the filling the vacancies”.

McDonnell said Mr Corbyn was trying to “hold everyone together but be very clear about our direction of travel in terms of policy”.

There were now 17 women and 14 men in the full shadow cabinet.

In September 2015 she told the BBC that “I don’t think being against nuclear weapons is that zany”. Issues of national security and defence go well beyond party politics.

Paraphrasing Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, a poem in which an albatross carries a curse on the crew of a ship, Mr Cameron said: “Never mind how many Eagles we end up with, I think you have all worked out you’ve got an albatross at the head of your party”.

The Stalybridge and Hyde MP also highlighted his opposition to Stop The War – which Mr Corbyn formerly chaired – describing it as “fundamentally wrong in their assessment of the threats the United Kingdom faces”.

He said: “You start off with a chess board and that’s fine, then you realise you’re playing a game on a parallel board as well and then you suddenly find there’s a third board down the way”. If he looked at the article I wrote in the New Statesman I was making a virtue of Jeremy’s new politics.

“On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday, McFadden added: “[Corbyn] clearly feels that me saying that terrorists are entirely responsible for their actions, that no one forces anyone to kill innocent people in Paris, blow up the London Underground, to behead innocent aid workers in Syria, that when I say they are entirely responsible for that he clearly interpreted that as an attack on him”.

Former Labour leadership candidate Chuka Umunna said: “Sad to see Jonathan Reynolds leave our front bench – a huge talent who will now make a big contribution promoting Labour values from the back benches”.