Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attempted to draw a line under the “longest reshuffle in history” during an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, claiming he was in charge of a “strong” shadow cabinet, only to see his shadow attorney-general Catherine McKinnell quit just hours later. There is mounting frustration among those who had signed up to Corbyn’s promised “pluralist” leadership, says Jim Pickard in the FT. Last week Corbyn “axed” two MPs for voicing their opinions, prompting three junior members of Labour’s frontbench team to resign.
His Today interview won’t have helped matters, says Matt Dathan in The Independent. During the interview the “life-long unilateralist” also said he was considering how to change the pro-Trident policy and pledged to give Labour members a “big say” in the matter, risking “deeper splits” with MPs and his shadow cabinet. Although Corbyn swapped pro-Trident defence secretary Maria Eagle with anti-Trident Emily Thornberry last week, most of his top team remain in favour of renewing Britain’s fleet of Trident ballistic missile submarines.
Three shadow cabinet ministers, Lord Falconer, Owen Smith and Lucy Powell, have refused to rule out resigning if the party changes its policy. Corbyn faces opposition from his MPs and from two of the three biggest Labour-affiliated unions, Unite and GMB, which support Trident renewal due to the thousands of jobs that rely on it.
Allowing the National Executive Committee to decide whether to introduce rules handing power to party members “would downgrade the role of the party conference and the shadow cabinet”, say Rowena Mason and Nicholas Watt in The Guardian. Senior shadow ministers insist that any changes to the way policy is made can’t happen without the permission of conference, which won’t take place until September, says Paul Waugh in The Huffington Post. The government is considering a vote on Trident as early as April.