Shadow Rail Minister Quits After Reshuffle

Jeremy Corbyn is expected to finalise his frontbench team later by filling posts left vacant after three shadow ministers resigned on Wednesday.

The appointments follows a Labour reshuffle which is now into its fourth day and has seen Stalybridge and Hyde MP Jonathan Reynolds stand down from the frontbench, citing differences of opinion with the leadership.

The ousted MP said this week that the front bench reshuffle had hindered the prospect of the “new politics” promised by Mr Corbyn, whose promises that “room for a little dissent” had proved unreliable.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell dismissed the trio who have quit as part of a “narrow right-wing clique”.

Maria Eagle has been moved from the key shadow defence secretary role and replaced by Emily Thornberry – known to share Mr Corbyn’s views on scrapping Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

Shadow Culture Secretary Michael Dugher and shadow Europe Minister Pat Fadden.

Mr McFadden said he had been given the boot “in particular because of questions I asked about terrorism and national security in the Commons statement following the Paris terrorist attacks”.

He kept on Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary who openly opposed Corbyn in backing a British air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria.

Kevan Jones The shadow defence minister who earlier clashed with Corbyn ally Ken Livingstone said he would make the case for replacing Trident from the backbenches.

Ms Thornberry insisted she wanted a “truly open policy review” on the future of Trident – but Mr Corbyn hopes to change policy-making rules to allow it to be set via a poll of members and supporters.

“I have not been muzzled”.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said: “This reshuffle shows that a divided Labour Party is a threat to national security”.

The Labour leader intervened: “It wasn’t very amusing for them”.

He defended the length of the reshuffle, saying his “great failing in life” is to “listen to everybody at whatever great length they wish to speak to me”. “It led to a million people – nearly all of them innocent civilians, men, women and children – being killed”. A source said the scheme referred to by the Labour leader was one of a number put forward and it was turned down in favour of another proposal, which is now being implemented.

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.

McDonnell said that Corbyn was trying to “hold everyone together” while being “very clear about our direction of travel in terms of policy”.

“I think millions of people will have seen Prime Minister’s Questions today as the Labour Party caring about what’s happening with the floods and the Government avoiding that”. Many Labour MPs have accused Corbyn of veering too far from the center.

To Corbyn’s reasoned call for “a coordinated cross-party approach to flooding”, the PM shot back: “The best I can say is when he’s worked out how to co-ordinate his own party then perhaps he can come and have a word with me”.