Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow and Ben Quinn

Emily Thornberry named shadow defence secretary in Labour reshuffle – as it happened

Emily Thornberry, the Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury
Emily Thornberry, the Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury. Photograph: Richard Saker for the Observer

Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle of Labour’s front bench has been designed to create a more unified shadow cabinet, reports the Guardian’s Rowena Mason in a wrap which takes account of events of the past two hours.

However, Corbyn decided to retain his shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, after coming to an agreement on their future working.

The Labour leader moved Eagle to shadow culture secretary, mostly because she disagreed with his anti-Trident position.

The deal means there will be no repetition of their disagreement about the vote on bombing Syria, during which Corbyn argued against military action and Benn gave a speech in favour.

All future positions on foreign policy will be directed by Corbyn, a Labour source said.

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”.

McFadden is being replaced by Pat Glass, who chairs Labour’s pro-EU group. Emma Lewell-Buck also gets a promotion to shadow devolution minister.

In a statement McFadden said he had originally accepted the post because the EU issue was of “crucial importance” with an in/out referendum looming.

You can read Rowena’s piece in full here. And on that note we really are going to wrap up the blog now.

Updated

With an eye perhaps to the criticism which was directed at the Labour leadership in recent months about a lack of women in senior cabinet positions, there’s also an ‘editor’s note’ at the end of the Labour press release:

This Shadow Cabinet has 17 women and 14 men members.

Updated

Here’s the official Labour statement on the reshuffle, courtesy of Paul Waugh:

Also worth noting that Lord Falconer has emerged unscathed as shadow justice secretary and shadow lord chancellor.

Labour has also tweeted a link to a webpage now also containing the details.

Updated

While not as combative as those of some other MPs reacting to McFadden’s sacking, Hilary Benn has taken to Twitter to quite pointedly express his support for the former shadow Europe secretary.

Updated

Some more detail is coming out in in terms of the rationale for Emily Thornberry going in as shadow defence secretary.

The shadow of Iraq would appear to loom large if the briefing given to Buzzfeed’s Jim Waterson is anything to go by.


That said, while she was against the 2003 Iraq war, the Islington South MP took a different approach to the 2014 vote on strikes against Islamic State in Iraq.

Here’s what she told the Islington Gazette at the time of the 2014 vote:

Even though I was against us going into Iraq the fact is we did and we have a responsibility for what’s happened in Iraq and what is essentially a baby democracy

It’s a very different situation that we’re talking about now, they’ve asked for our help.

As noted below though, her views on Trident are much more in sync with those of Jeremy Corbyn’s. She was one of a number of MPs who left a parliamentary debate on the replacement of Trident in 2007 to address a CND rally outside.

With Maria Eagle now out of the picture as co-covenor of Labour’s defence review, conflict is much less likely between Thornberry and Ken Livingstone, another opponent of Trident.

Updated

Hilary Benn appears to be safe for now in his role as shadow foreign secretary although commentators are suggesting that he has somehow had his wings clipped.

George Eaton says that an arrangement has been reached with Corbyn.

McFadden: Corbyn sacked me over terrorism questions

Pat McFadden has issued a statement:

I accepted the post of shadow Europe minister because Britain’s future in the EU is of crucial importance, particularly when the Conservatives are so divided on the issue.

I hope Labour retains its strong and clear position to campaign for the United Kingdom in the EU.

Tonight Mr Corbyn has told me he does not want me to continue to serve on his front bench, in particular because of questions I asked about terrorism and national security in the Commons statement following the Paris terrorist attacks.

It is his prerogative to decide his front bench team and I will continue to support and work for Labour in any way I can.

McFadden included the text of the question he asked the prime minister in November.

Tweets like this from late last year may not have done him any favours as well with the new Labour leadership.

Updated

Jamie Reed, MP for Copeland, has also joined in the backlash over McFadden’s sacking:

Emma Lewell Buck becomes shadow minister for local govt

The new shadow minister for devolution and local government is Emma Lewell Buck, MP for South Shields.

A 34-year-old social worker and longtime South Tyneside councillor, she told the Guardian’s Helen Pidd in 2013 that she would be “a different sort of MP”

Updated

The backlash from MPs hostile to Corbyn’s leadership is already under way following McFadden’s sacking, with Ian Austin and John Woodcock weighing in:

Updated

Emily Thornberry becomes new shadow defence secretary

Emily Thornberry becomes the new shadow defence secretary, as widely tipped, taking over the post from Maria Eagle.

It solves a problem of sorts for Corbyn in that Thornberry appears to be at one with him on opposing the renewal of Trident (unlike Maria Eagle).

Updated

Maria Eagle becomes shadow culture secretary

Maria Eagle moves into Michael Dugher’s vacated position of shadow culture secretary.

Updated

Was this the moment when Pat McFadden sealed his fate? Here’s what he asked David Cameron during that debate on 17 November:

May 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 that such an approach risks infantilising the terrorists and treating them like children, when the truth is that they are adults who are entirely responsible for what they do? No one forces them to kill innocent people in Paris or Beirut.

Unless we are clear about that, we will fail even to understand the threat we face, let alone confront it and ultimately overcome it.

Cameron replied:

It is that sort of moral and intellectual clarity that is necessary in dealing with terrorists. I know there is something deep in all of us that wants to try to find an excuse, an explanation or an understanding, but sometimes the answer is staring us in the face. With ISIL, that is absolutely the case.

Updated

Is conflict going to be averted in relation to Maria Eagle, shadow defence secretary?

The BBC’s Chris Mason has this:

McFadden’s reaction to Paris and a “coded attack” on Corbyn is emerging as the catalyst for his sacking

The Sun’s Harry Cole has dug out McFadden’s question to the Prime Minister from last year:

So what happened to Pat McFadden? The Guardian’s Rowena Mason has more on why Corbyn decided to sack him.

An early look back through flashpoints between McFadden and Corbyn throws up the question of Europe.

A passionate pro-European, McFadden had been critical of Jeremy Corbyn’s ambivalence on the issue, saying his leadership requires more decisiveness.

While he had been critical of Corbyn’s perceived ambivalence, he had been prepared to remain in the post in light of what he regarded as a commitment from his party leader to campaign for Britain to stay in the EU.

However, what is much more likely to have been a source of conflict was McFadden’s implicit criticism of his party leader in parliamentary reactions to last year’s Paris massacres.

In November, McFadden rose to ask David Cameron if he would reject the view that terrorism was always a reaction to something the West had been responsible for. The Prime Minister praised him for his “moral and intellectual clarity.”

Updated

You wait for three days and then they all come along at once, by the sound of it.

Pat Glass is new shadow Europe Minister

The new shadow Europe minister is Pat Glass, MP for North West Durham.

A member of the education select committee, as well as the GMB union, most of her working life has been in education. She has worked in senior positions in local education authorities across the country, according to a profile on politics.co.uk.

Outside of her constituency, I think it’s fair to say she’ll be largely unknown to the British public.

It’s worth noting that she backed Andy Burnham in the Labour leadership election.

Labour MP Pat Glass outside the newly opened Consett Academy.
Labour MP Pat Glass outside the newly opened Consett Academy in Durham in 2015 Photograph: Gary Calton for the Observer

Updated

McFadden’s crime? Disloyality, according to a breifing given to New Stateman’s George Eaton.

Pat McFadden fired from Labour front bench

A casualty: shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden has been sacked

Updated

They probably need something with a little bit more of a kick at this stage, but at least journalists waiting for white (red?) smoke from Jeremy Corbyn’s office are able to have a brew.

The waiting goes on meanwhile..

As many as six or seven cabinet ministers will campaign for a Brexit now that Cameron has given them free rein, former defence secretary Liam Fox has told BBC Newsnight.

Three might have resigned if it had been otherwise, he added.

Ken Clarke was also on the programme, repeating some of the comments he made earlier today, when he warned that Cameron’s decision would have a lasting weakening, rather divisive impact on the government.

“Fortunately for us the Labour party is in an even bigger mess than us on collective responsibility,” he told Newsnight.

And on that note we are going to call it a night here. Do join us tomorrow for when (surely!?) we will have a fuller picture of the outcome of the Labour reshuffle.

Update: Strike that from the record. We’re going to keep it going here for just a little longer..

Updated

Lisa Nandy, currently Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, dodged the shadow defence brief before it could even be offered to her, according to John Rentoul.

Wednesday’s front pages have been coming through (via Nick Sutton).

Both the Mail and the Express are overjoyed at Cameron’s move to give minister’s free rein to campaign for a British withdrawal from the EU. The Mail, in particular, is eager to claim some credit for Cameron’s decision.

Here’s the front of Wednesday’s Guardian, which also leads on the EU story:

Updated

Gary Gibbons of Channel 4 reports that there is a wide expectation that when two names emerge from the ballots of Tory MPs to be chosen as next Tory leader after David Cameron, one of them will be an MP who openly backed the Leave campaign.

He adds in a blog post:

George Osborne, a senior Tory MP said, will consider it a “significant tactical advantage” if this exercise has smoked out Theresa May and Boris Johnson as “Remain” supporters.

Will the “free vote” make the campaign a little more civil even if it doesn’t change the numbers?

David Cameron will be hoping that pro-Leave ministers with a hope of keeping/getting jobs will not rubbish his renegotiation or his leadership.

Shirley Williams believes the lessons from 1975 when Harold Wilson relaxed the rules are that it is the best way to keep the party together.

Her SDP counterpart, Roy Jenkins, used to argue that having cross-party panels on either side actually contributed to the shake up of the party system and the formation of the SDP.

Many Labour voices over the years have said it bought a moment’s peace and little more.

Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins in February 1981 with some of the funds sent by supporters of their Council For Social Democracy, shortly announce the launch of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins in February 1981 with some of the funds sent by supporters of their Council For Social Democracy, shortly announce the launch of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

Updated

Chris Grayling and Theresa Villiers are planning to join Iain Duncan Smith in campaigning to leave the EU, reports the Guardian’s Nicholas Watt, who says that Grayling and Villiers told the prime minister on Monday that he should clarify the position that ministers will be able to take during the campaign.

He adds:

Authoritative sources told the Guardian that Duncan Smith, Grayling and Villiers will campaign to leave the EU. Duncan Smith will not show his hand until the EU negotiations have been completed because he is a member of the cabinet committee overseeing them.

Theresa May, the home secretary, will decide which side to support once the negotiations have been completed. In her speech to the Tory conference, May appeared to be leaning to the leave side though ministers believe that would be a difficult position to sustain given her support for EU criminal justice cooperation.

London mayor Boris Johnson said he too would make up his mind once the negotiations have been completed. There is a growing belief that Michael Gove, the justice secretary, will set aside his strong reservations about the EU to support the prime minister.

The prime minister’s decision will pose a dilemma for Sajid Javid, the business secretary (below). Friends regard him as on the leave side but he may be wary of parting company with his patron George Osborne.

Sajid Javid speaking at the Conservative Party Conference on October 5.
Sajid Javid speaking at the Conservative Party Conference on October 5. Photograph: Ray Tang/REX Shutterstock

Saudi Arabia’s attitude to human rights cannot be changed overnight, the government’s minister for the Middle East has claimed, arguing that any progress would need to “move at a pace that is acceptable to [the country’s] society”.

That was Tobias Ellwood, who is parliamentary under-secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs, speaking earlier in a statement which he was called on to make. The Guardian’s Frances Perraudin has filed on a piece on his comments, and the responses from MPs:

Ellwood said the Saudi government was well aware of the British government’s disapproval of human rights abuses by the country.

The minister had already come under fire from opposition parties for initially describing the announcement of Saudi Arabia’s execution of 47 people, including the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, as “disappointing”. The British Foreign Office later issued a tougher message calling for restraint on all sides.

The executions sparked protests in Shia-dominated Iran, where the Saudi embassy was stormed. This led to the Saudis breaking off diplomatic relations with Tehran, followed by Bahrain and Sudan.

“We believe that it is more effective to work with other countries to improve and reform their systems, rather than criticise from the sidelines.”

Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn said the minister was right to refer to the importance of the two countries’ cooperation on counter-terrorism and tackling the threat from Isis.

Read France’s piece in full here.

While we await a potentially pivotal moment in the future of the Labour party (the broader reshuffle that is, rather than just Emily Thornberry’s career) Nick Pearce of the IPR think tank offers some food for thought on the question of whether modern political parties face the prospect of remorseless decline.

Social Democratic parties face the most acute challenge, he adds:

They have suffered the steepest decline of their core constituencies and cannot rest on the conservative reflexes of an ageing electorate.

It is noticeable that in recent elections in Spain, Germany and the UK, the decline in mainstream party vote shares has been asymmetric: the centre-right bloc has held up better than the centre-left, despite voters peeling off from both.

For social democratic parties the challenge is to reinvent their democratic practices and party forms, while remaining electorally competitive – a challenge that is a lot easier to state than to meet. But unless they can reinvent themselves, the party may well be over.

That blog in full can be read here.

Updated

Paul Waugh of the HuffPost UK says he has been told that as many as 11 members of the shadow could resign if the Labour leader sacks Hilary Benn now.

Emily Thornberry has meanwhile arrived at Jeremy Corbyn’s office

Updated

Comic timing isn’t usually David Cameron’s strong point, writes John Crace, in his sketch of Tuesday’s events in parliament, but for once the prime minister landed a moderately effective pre-cooked line.

“No matter how many Eagles there are,” said Cameron, “the Labour party will always have an albatross at the head of the party.”

Angela Eagle seemed to find this funnier than anyone else in the chamber, laughing longer and louder than the joke deserved.

Corbyn flushed with anger while Dave looked nonplussed; he’d never received such an enthusiastic reaction to one of his gags. Even from his family. Especially from them.

You can read that sketch in full here.

David Cameron takes part in Prime Ministers questions on January 5.
David Cameron takes part in Prime Ministers questions on January 5. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images

Steve Richards, the journalist and biographer of Gordon Brown and New Labour, reckons that neither Jeremy Corbyn nor David Cameron can overcome the schisms that are now tearing their parties apart.

In a piece for the Guardian (which you can read in full here), he writes:

Increasingly, and deceptively, UK politics is viewed as a presidential contest. Think of the focus on the party leaders during elections and between them. And the pivotal test of a leader’s success is his or her strength over their party.

Margaret Thatcher was not for turning, even if her colleagues wanted her to do so. Tony Blair had no reverse gear as he lectured Labour vaguely about doing “the right thing”. Leaders must be strong. Leaders must be bold. In the UK they are expected to be as mighty as a president.

But they cannot be presidential, even if they try to appear so. They are leaders of parties, but are dependent on the support of their parties in order to lead.

The current freakish situation makes the case vividly. Parties, or parliamentary parties, flex their muscles and the leaders have to respond.

Jeremy Corbyn is still being urged by his allies to sack the shadow foreign secretary, reports the Guardian’s Rowena Mason, but has been warned that up to 10 of his senior team could walk out if Benn is removed.

In light of the threatened departures, Benn’s future is thought to be safe if he is prepared to promise not to dissent from his leader in public and limit disagreements to private discussions.

But some of Corbyn’s allies are adamant that he should get rid of Benn, warning that he will be at the centre of future rebellions such as over the Syria vote if it is not done now.

One Labour MP said Benn would be a figurehead for repeated shadow cabinet rebellions if he is not removed from the high-profile position.

The leader’s team would not confirm any hirings or firings, but Dugher revealed on Twitter that he had been sacked by telephone because of his public disloyalty.

Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn sitting together in the House of Commons on January 5.
Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn together in the House of Commons on January 5. Photograph: PA

Updated

As widely tipped, the shadow defence secretary job at Labour has been offered to Emily Thornberry, according to the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope.

So what happens to Maria Eagle?

For the record, Thornberry is at one with Jeremy Corbyn on opposing the renewal of Trident.

“I don’t think being against nuclear weapons is that zany,” she told the BBC in September.

Updated

There’s been a potentially very significant announcement this evening from the Home Office, which says that it will be taking control of fire and rescue policy ahead of plans for closer working with the police.

Ministerial responsibility for the services will be transferred from the Department for Communities and Local Government, reports the Press Association. It adds:

The move is part of a commitment to bring about greater joint working between the police and fire service.

The Home Office said the response across the country to recent flooding shows how well the police and fire service already work together to protect the public and support local communities.

Under plans set out in a consultation last year, police and crime commissioners (PCCs) will be able to take control of fire services in their area.

The elected officials will be able to put in place a single “employer” led by a senior officer in charge of hiring all local fire and police personnel.

It is part of a wider strategy to foster closer working relationships between emergency services, which could lead to arrangements such as sharing back office functions, although the Government insists they will remain operationally independent.

Unions have attacked the proposals.

The New Stateman’s Political Editor, George Eaton, offers this nugget:

Could the smart money be on Emily Thornberry? Or perhaps Clive Lewis (despite his insistence that he doesn’t want a shadow cabinet job)?

Back on Labour reshuffle watch meanwhile and Jeremy Corbyn, deputy leader Tom Watson and Labour chief whip Rosie Winterton have all left the labour leader’s office in the last 20 minutes.

The Daily Telegraph’s Laura Hughes tweets this little comment from Corbyn to journalists waiting outside:

Updated

Caroline Lucas challenges the government by mentioning a legal opinion obtained by Amnesty and other human rights groups which said that UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia are fuelling the civil war in Yemen and breach domestic, European and international law obligations.

The legal opinion of Prof Philippe Sands QC, Prof Andrew Clapham and Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh of Matrix Chambers, argues, on the basis of the information available, the British government is breaching its obligations under the UK’s consolidated criteria on arms exports, the EU common position on arms exports and the arms trade treaty by continuing to authorise transfers of weapons and related equipment to Saudi Arabia.

Ellwood replies that the UK has one of the most vigorous licensing export regimes in the world.

If there are any genuine examples of misuse of the UK weapons which have been sold abroad then the government has the ability to act, he adds.

Tory MP Gerald Howard describes the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a “very important” ally of the UK in the region

“Internal order must be a matter for Saudi Arabia as internal order must be a matter for authorities in the United Kingdom,” he adds.

“Nevertheless the draconian crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia has already had very serious ramifications across the region and has potentially has ramifications for the relationship between us and Saudi Arabia.”

“May I urged the minister to impress on our Saudi friends that this is a very serious matter and that in showing leniency, particularly to these young juveniles, they will be doing not only us a favour but themselves as well.”

Liberal Democrat Tim Farron wants the the government to commit to publishing a memorandum between the UK and Saudi Arabia on security and another one on judicial co-operation, both of which he says have been withheld despite FOI requests.

Farron also wants the government to call for Saudi Arabia to step down from the UN Human Rights council, of which it is a member.

Referring to recent executions in Saudi Arabia, including that of a high profile Shia cleric, The Liberal Democrat leader adds: “He carefully avoided condemning the actions of Saudi Arabia over the weekend. Will he do so now.”

Ellwood responds: “I have made it very clear that we oppose the death penalty and we have continued to engage at the highest levels. Saudi Arabia is aware of our views and the UK is committed to advancing the global abolition of the death penalty.”

Ellwood also emphasises Saudi Arabia’s participation in talks aimed at bringing about a resolution to hostilities in Syria, adding: “You could arguably say that they would not be taking place without Saudi Arabia at the table.”

Some background to this debate: Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has been under close scrutiny on a number of fronts recently.

• MPs and campaigners are anxious that there is scrutiny over the government’s decision to continue allowing arms exports to Saudi Arabia when there are human rights concerns about the weapons’ possible use for repression in Yemen. Amnesty International and Saferworld say more than 100 licences for arms exports to Saudi Arabia have been issued since bombing in Yemen began in March 2015, with a value of £1.75bn in the first half of the year.

• Britain has been challenged to withdraw its support for Saudi Arabia as chair of the UN human rights council panel as the closeness of the UK-Saudi relationship was dismissed as sycophantic by the Liberal Democrats and Labour called for an end to judicial cooperation with Riyadh.
The outcry from British politicians came after the Foreign Office initially described the announcement of the execution of 47 people, including the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, as disappointing.

The SNP’s Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh challenge’s Ellwood on the UK position in relation to Saudi membership of the UN Human rights council.

Ellwood says that Saudi Arabia’s election to that body (much criticised) was uncontested and came about as a result of the decisions of a consultative group of which the UK is not a member.

Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood is responding for the government and begins by mentioning the speculation about Benn’s continuing role.

“Could I firstly say after much speculation I am delighted to see him in his place,” says Ellwood, eyes down and without any apparent smile.

“He commands a level of respect for which parliament is all the wiser for.”

In response to Benn’s questions, Ellwood says: “We have a robust licensing scrutiny in place. We will look at absolutely any aspect in place where we feel that UK arms has been used in an inappropriate way.”

In relation to judicial cooperation between the UK and Saudi Arabia, he says that the UK is working behind the scenes.

Saudi Arabia is “pivotal” to overall peace in the middle east, he adds.

Saudi Arabia statement in House of Commons

Hilary Benn is on his feet in the House of Commons (sans Jeremy Corbyn by his side) in his (for now?) continuing role as Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, questioning the government about Saudi Arabia.

He says that he has already called on the government to launch an immediate review of arms and export licences to Saudi Arabia and wants it to carry out a review urgently of whether UK arms have been used in breach of international law.

Benn also suggest that it may be time to cancel a memorandum of understanding of judicial cooperation with Saudi Arabia.

Updated

So here again is Michael Dugher (who Michael Crick of Channel 4 News has just described as “quite an operator”)

In a pre-recorded interview from earlier today, Dugher has told Cathy Newman on that he was actually being “very loyal” to the Labour leader and wanted to defend Corbyn’s “new politics.”

“He said that we are going to have straight talking honest politics, and I am a fairly straight talker.”

“The real casualty today in this reshuffle is not me. It’s the new politics, because that is not how it has worked out in practise.”

Talk turns to Emily Thornberry, Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral neighbour in Islington, who has been tipped to replace Hilary Benn as Labour’s shadow foreign secretary.

“Islington is a very different place to lots of other parts of the country,” says Dugher, who was asked by Cathy Newman about Thornberry’s ‘white van man’ tweet which cost her place in Labour’s shadow cabinet under Ed Miliband.

“It’s very hard to win election if you can’t persuade people who drive vans to vote Labour,” says Dugher.
“There is a reason why she went.” (ouch)

In answer to another question from Newman, he says that he doesn’t believe that Jeremy Corbyn looks down his nose at “white van man” but insists that Labour faces “a big test”.

Would he take on Corbyn in a future leadership election if the party has bad results in elections this year?
“No, I think we should be coming together now,” he replies.

Ken Clarke has popped up on Channel 4 News, where he says that the Prime Minister’s move to permit cabinet ministers to campaign in favour of a ‘Brexit’ is a great pity.

“The country needs a strong government because we have a lot of serious problems at home and abroad,” he says, adding that Britain is now going to have a government where people still hold office while feeling perfectly free to criticise the policy of the Prime Minister.

“That is likely to have lasting weakening, rather divisive affect.”

Tory MP Michael Fabricant is next up and accuses Clarke of being “alarmist.”

“Far from weakening the party this is the sensible approach to take,” he insists.

“I love Ken Clarke. I was his PPS many years ago. I talk to him everyday and I think we are good friends. We are certainly not in open warfare.”

Michael Dugher’s round of interviews from the outside of Labour shadow cabinet continues. He’ll be on Channel 4 news shortly, tweets Cathy Newman.

In what must be a welcome relief from her busy last 48 hours discussing defending her leader’s handling of Labour’s reshuffle, Cat Smith has been on her feet in the House of Commons in the last few minutes and this time she’s taking on the government.

Between 2011 and 2015 Lancashire Fire and Rescue service saw a reduction of 241 firefighters, according to Smith, who wants the Secretary of State for the Environment to commit to creating a statutory duty and the relevant investment to enable fire fighters to tackle flooding in the future

Replying, LizTruss pays tribute to the work of the fire service and the emergency services. No direct answer to Smith’s question though.

Wednesday’s issue of the Morning Star - a backer of Jeremy Corbyn and one of his favourite newspapers - is splashing with Michael Dugher on the front page.

“Incompetent, Disloyal, Dumped… Dugher booted out of the shadow cabinet” it says.

MPs to debate call for UK ban on Donald Trump

MPs are to debate calls for the US presidential candidate Donald Trump to be banned from the UK following his controversial comments about Muslims, after more than half a million people signed a petition.

The government signalled last month that it would not refuse Trump entry after he was widely criticised for saying that Muslims should be banned from entering the US.

However, the call for the sanction to be imposed on the businessman will now at least have a hearing in parliament after the House of Commons petitions committee announced on Tuesday that it was scheduling a session in Westminster Hall on 18 January.

Donald Trump campaigns in Massachusetts on January 4.
Donald Trump campaigns in Massachusetts on January 4. Photograph: Brooks Kraft/Corbis

More than 560,000 people have signed the petition demanding the billionaire businessman be barred. Politicians will also discuss a separate petition opposing such a ban, even though it only gained about 40,000 signatures – well below the 100,000 threshold for triggering a debate.

Trump, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination in the US, faced an international backlash last month after urging a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”.

Here’s the official notice (via Paul Waugh of the HuffingtonPost UK):

Updated

Environment Minister Liz Truss has been taking questions in the House of Commons about the recent flooding.

Yvette Cooper has asked if Truss accepts that the government was wrong to cancel parts of the Leeds defence scheme.

Truss insists that the government is continuing to invest in flood defence schemes, adding: “Yorkshire does have many schemes. The Humber has been mentioned, but also the scheme in Leeds.”

The Green Party’s MP, Caroline Lucas, asks how much money will be invested in natural flood management schemes during the lifetime of the parliament and will if it will be in addition to the money already committed

Truss replies: “My view is that we can get better value for money by improving our environment and also resilience.”
“This is about how we spend our money better and how we plan better for the future.”

She doesn’t provide a figure in response to that question.

Good evening by the way. I’m Ben Quinn, picking up the liveblog from Andy Sparrow. We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for developments in relation to Labour’s ongoing reshuffle (I have a feeling of deja vu).

Cameron's EU statement - Summary

Here are the key points from David Cameron’s statement on the EU summit, and his Q&A with MPs afterwards.

  • He claimed that he had always planned to allow ministers a free vote.

It has never been my intention, and I signalled this very clearly before Christmas, to strong-arm people into voting for a position that they don’t agree with.

This is not true. In January last year, when asked on the Andrew Marr Show if he would allow a free vote, Cameron replied: “No, I’ve set out that very clearly in the past.”

  • He said that he would not resign as prime minister if Britain voted to leave the EU despite the government advising people to vote to stay. He sidestepped the question when Labour’s Dennis Skinner asked this. But when Labour’s Barry Gardiner tried again, he replied:

This is the choice of the British people. Our aim to set forward a choice for the British people that they want. And they can either choose to stay in a reformed European Union, or to leave a European Union. And, come what may, I will continue to lead the government in the way I have.

  • He said that, although he hoped to get an EU deal at the EU summit in February, it could take “considerably longer”. Asked by the Conservative Cheryl Gillan when the referendum would take place, he replied:

I cannot guarantee we will reach agreement in February. What the council agreed is we will try to reach agreement in February on all four issues - so that is the aim.

Later he said:

We don’t know when the deal will be done; I hope February, but it could take considerably longer. When you are negotiating with 27 other countries, all sorts of things can happen.

  • He said that, if Britain voted to leave the EU, it could find it impossible to retain access to the single market without also accepting free movement rules. He told the Labour MP Chuka Umunna.

If you look at countries like Iceland and Norway, they have to obey all the rules of the single market, including the free movement of people, but without having any say on what those rules are. In Norway they’ve described it as “democracy by fax” because the instructions come through from Brussels. And they pay more per head to the EU than we do.

And later he said he was watching “very closely” how Switzerland was trying to renegotiate its relationship with the EU so as to allow it to impose immigration controls, in line with a referendum decision. He said:

The difficulty of their position is, of course, the European Union is saying to Switzerland, ‘We’re happy to talk to you about free movement of people’, but of course everything else is up for grabs. And there is no guarantee of Swiss access to any part of the single market unless there can be agreement on this area. I do think that is worth thinking about carefully in terms of the relationship between a country, particularly a small country outside the EU, and the rest of the EU.

  • He mocked the amount of time Jeremy Corbyn was taking over his reshuffle.

Can I apologise for interrupting what’s clearly the longest reshuffle in history? You could have watched the entire run of Star Wars movies but we still don’t yet know who’s been seduced to the dark side. There’s absolutely no sign of a rebel alliance emerging either, I can see that.

Cameron had a point about the Labour reshuffle. We were hoping that by now it would be over, but there is still no sign of a conclusion. In the 1980s it is said that the leftwingers used to take over constituency Labour parties by turning up to meetings and keeping them going until midnight, by which time all the “moderates” had gone home and the left were able to win the votes. This reshuffle is beginning to feel a bit like that, although who’s winning and who’s losing is not entirely clear.

At this point I’m going home too. But my colleague Ben Quinn is taking over.

Updated

According to Channel 4 News’s Michael Crick, Jeremy Corbyn wants Hilary Benn to agree not to oppose him in public.

It looks as if it could be another long night on the reshuffle doorstep.

Michael Dugher gave an interview to Sky News just before David Cameron started his Commons statement. Here are the key points.

  • Dugher accused Corbyn’s aides of “trashing” the reputations of some of those in the shadow cabinet facing the sack. He said:

I was frustrated and angry about the fact that in recent weeks we have seen the terrible trashing of people’s reputations. Good, hardworking, decent, loyal members of the shadow cabinet have had their reputations trashed in the newspapers because people in the employment of Jeremy have been giving these stories to the newspapers that all these people were going to be fired in some kind of ‘revenge reshuffle’. I thought that was hugely damaging; I thought it was really unfair on those people; I thought it was demoralising for them.

  • He said that Corbyn had told him, when he sacked him by phone this morning, that he did not like some of the things Dugher had been writing. See 11.25am for details. (I am presuming that Corbyn was referring to what Dugher had said in interviews too, not just what he had written. Dugher’s most provocative remarks were in interviews.)
  • Dugher said that his sacking showed that Corbyn was going back on the “new politics” he promised.

You mentioned ‘first casualty’. The truth is I think the real casualty today has been the ‘new politics’ that we were all promised four months ago by Jeremy. And I think that’s a real shame; a real squandered opportunity, because I think actually people were attracted by the idea that we could unite and come together, people of different views - make a virtue of having debates and proper discussions and, in Jeremy’s, words even have a little dissent and straight talking, honest politics. I think people were attracted to that. I think I tried to do my best in delivering some straight talking and honest politics, and I think it was a little too much for him, which is a shame.

I’ve taken the quotes from PoliticsHome.

David Cameron’s Commons statement is now over. I will post a summary soon, while also catching up with the latest developments, or non-developments more likely, in the Labour reshuffle story.

In the House of Lords Lord Kinnock, the former Labour leader and former European commissioner, asked a written question asking what factual evidence the government had for thinking benefits “are a factor in encouraging immigration to the UK from other EU member states”.

In his response, Lord Freud, a welfare minister, was unable to cite any such evidence.

Here is the text of what Freud says for anyone who cannot read the tweet. He said:

The benefits system is one of a range of factors attracting migrants to Britain. Net migration to the UK stood at 336,000 in the year to June 2015 according to the November 2015 Migration Statistics Quarterly Report from the Office for National Statistics, and EU nationals are a significant contributor to recent increases. Meanwhile, an analysis of administrative data held by the Department for Work and Pensions showed that between 37% and 45% of all recent EU migrants were in households supported by the benefits system as of March 2013.

The Government has already introduced tough new measures to ensure that EU jobseekers will have no access to means-tested benefits whatsoever as Universal Credit is rolled out.

And now we want to ensure that the welfare system plays no part in the migration decisions of any EU national. The Prime Minister is therefore pursuing further reforms to ensure that EU migrants who come to the UK for low-paid work cannot claim in-work benefits until they have lived here and contributed to our country for a minimum of four years.

Cameron says he is not sure that the Spanish would ever let an independent Scotland back into the EU.

And he says that, in the independence referendum, the Scots vowed to abide by the decision that was taken in the referendum. They decided to remain in the UK as one united kingdom.

Cameron says he is watching Switzerland’s attempt to renegotiate its relationship with the EU, so that it can opt out of free movement rules, with great interest. He says one problem is that the EU is insisting on all aspects of that relationship being up for renegotiation.

Labour’s Paul Farrelly asks if Cameron’s plan to stop EU migrants claiming benefits for four years is a proposal or a demand.

Cameron says it is his proposal. It will remain on the table until someone comes up with a better idea.

Toby Perkins, the Labour defence spokesman, says that he does not think the changes Cameron is asking for will make a great deal of difference. And they will be reversible, he says.

Cameron says he wants irreversible changes. In future, if a UK prime minister and 27 other EU leaders wanted something different, that would be worrying. But if any future government wanted to hand powers back to Brussels, there would have to be a referendum, he says.

Cameron says the UK’s demand for welfare changes has stimulated a debate in Europe. The Germans also want changes, although they have a more contributory welfare system than we do, he says.

Labour’s David Anderson asks what the impact on Ireland, and Northern Ireland, would be if Britain voted to leave.

Cameron says Anderson makes a very good point. He says he will be forever grateful to the very strong speech in support of Britain made by Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, at the EU summit.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Conservative, says Cameron should “screw his courage to the sticking point” and demand more from Chancellor Merkel.

Cameron says he will bear this in mind when he sees her on a trip to Bavaria tomorrow night.

Sir Gerald Howarth, a Conservative, welcomes the decision to allow ministers a free vote. If there is a deal in February, when will the referendum be?

Cameron says he does not like to answer questions starting with “if”. He would want to get on and hold the referendum. But “it should not be done with any undue haste”, he says. There should be “a proper number of months” before the referendum takes place.

Cameron indicates he will carry on as prime minister even if he loses the referendum

Labour’s Barry Gardiner asks Cameron what he will do if the country does not accept his recommendation in the referendum.

Cameron says he intends to carry on “come what may”.

  • Cameron indicates he will carry on as prime minister even if he loses the referendum.

Turning to Labour for a moment ...

Cameron says that one of the surprising things about Labour’s position is that they do not seem to be demanding anything from the EU renegotiation.

Number 10 is also briefing that Cameron decided some time ago to give ministers a free vote in the referendum.

That is not what they were saying at the time. Shortly before Christmas a Number 10 source told me: “Decisions on what happens after a deal has been struck [in relation to a free vote] will be made once that deal has been finalised.” On the basis of what Downing Street are saying now, that was untrue.

Cameron says it was always his intention to allow ministers a free vote in the referendum.

He says he hopes to get the renegotiation concluded by February, but it could take “considerably longer”.

Peter Bone, a Conservative, asks if Tory ministers are free to join Grassroots Out, a group campaigning for Brexit.

Cameron says ministers will be free to campaign for either side after the renegotiation has been concluded.

Labour’s Chuka Umunna asks if there are any countries that are part of the EU free movement but that do not have to agree to free movement in it.

Cameron says countries like Iceland and Norway have to obey all the rules of the free market, including free movement of people, without having a say in EU laws. Countries like Norway pay more per head for access to the free market, he says.

This is what Cameron said in his statement about allowing ministers a free vote in the EU referendum.

My intention is that at the conclusion of the renegotiation, the government should reach a clear recommendation and then the referendum will be held.

It is the nature of a referendum that it is the people not the politicians who decide.

And as indicated before Christmas, there will be a clear government position, but it will be open to individual ministers to take a different personal position while remaining part of the government.

Ultimately it will be for the British people to decide this country’s future by voting in or out of a reformed European Union in the referendum that only we promised and that only a Conservative majority government was able to deliver.

Cameron says he hopes that he will get an agreement at the February EU summit, but he cannot guarantee that.

After that, he wants to get on with the referendum. But he does not want to do it “precipitately”, he says.

He says in 1975 there was just one month between the passing of the legislation and the EEC referendum. That was not long enough. And the alternative vote referendum took place three months after the legislation was passed, he says. He says that is not long enough either.

Liam Fox, the Conservative former defence secretary, asks how being outside “ever closer union” will protect the UK from court decisions already taken that hinge on the “ever closer concept”?

Cameron says people say this phrase is just symbolic, but symbols matter in politics. He does not answer the point about court decisions that are already binding on the UK.

Julian Lewis, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, says broadcasters have been restrained in using the latest Islamic State (Isis) video. But newspapers have not, he says. He suggests they have been helping by spreading their propaganda. Will Cameron act?

Cameron says he does not agree. On the whole the media have been responsible, he says. In some respects people need to be aware of the video. The use of a child shows how horrific Isis are.

Labour’s Dennis Skinner asks Cameron if he will resign if he loses the referendum.

Cameron sidesteps the question, saying it is for the public to decide the outcome of the referendum.

  • Cameron refuses to say whether he will resign if he loses the referendum.

UPDATE: This is from the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire.

Updated

Sir Bill Cash, a Conservative, asks Cameron how a protocol registered with the UN would be legally binding.

Cameron says he wants to get promises that are legally binding and irreversible.

Yvette Cooper, head of Labour’s refugees taskforce, says she visited Calais before Christmas. There are children there, aged 11 and 12, on their own. Some disappear. She urges Cameron to accept the call to accept 3,000 orphan refugees.

Crispin Blunt, the Conservative chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, says the introduction of the “national living wage” will dwarf the impact of any change to in-work benefit rules for EU migrants.

Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster, is speaking now.

He says three EU countries have immigration opt outs: the UK, Ireland and Denmark.

But Ireland and Denmark are part of the EU refugee resettlement programme. Will Cameron reconsider the decision for Britain not to take part?

He says three of Cameron’s four EU demands are so limited as to be uncontentious.

Why does the government not say more about the “EU bonus” it gets from tax paid by EU migrants?

And will Cameron guarantee that, if Scotland votes to stay in the EU, it will stay?

Tory MPs groan. Robertson says the people of Scotland will hear those groands.

David Cameron says the people of Scotland voted to stay in the UK.

On resettlement, he says Britain is doing more than other EU countries to accept Syrian refugees.

He says it is “simply not true” to say that three of his four demands are uncontentious.

Kenneth Clarke, the Conservative former chancellor, asks if Cameron expects to get a full opt out from “ever closer union”. And are other EU countries interested in benefit reform?

Cameron says “ever closer union” does matter because the EU court uses it to make judgments.

On benefits, Cameron says some countries are concerned about the “hollowing out” they are experiencing because workers are coming to the UK.

Cameron is responding to Corbyn.

He apologises for interrupting the longest reshuffle in history. You could have watched the entire sequence of Star Wars films in the time it has taken, he says. He says no one has yet gone over to the dark side. And there is no sign of a rebel alliance emerging.

He says the government is still committed to its four-year benefit plan. Labour proposed something similar at the election, he says.

He says we don’t know how many Eagles Labour will end up with, but they have an albatross as leader.

He says Britain is not planning to take more Syrian immigrants. But Britain is delivering on what it has promised.

He says the government is still considering a request to take in 3,000 Syrian orphans.

And he says, when he went to Brussels, people asked what had happened to Labour.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, is responding to Cameron.

He says he also went to Brussels in December for a meeting with fellow socialists. He was told there that Cameron was botching the renegotiation.

To succeed in diplomacy, you need to make friends, he says.

But Cameron is not interested in making alliances. He is only interested in his party.

Corbyn asks how Cameron’s free vote policy will apply.

He asks Cameron to confirm that his plans to limit EU migrants’ access to benefits would be discriminatory and unfair, and likely to face legal challenge.

He asks Cameron to confirm that he has dropped plans to weaken EU social protection as part of his renegotiation.

Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn Photograph: BBC

Cameron confirms that ministers will be allowed a free vote in the EU referendum

Cameron is now talking about his EU renegotiation demands.

He says there was “strong support” for Britain staying in the EU.

All countries wanted to reach an agreement.

The most difficult issues were around free movement and welfare.

But the EU leaders agreed to find “solutions” in all four areas where Cameron is making demands. He says it is significant that the summit communique talked of “solutions” not “compromises”.

He says he thinks he has found a pathway to a solution. He is holding further meetings with EU leaders, and hopes to reach a solution by the summit in February.

There will be a clear government position, he says.

But it will be open to individual ministers to take a different position while remaining members of the government, he says.

  • Cameron confirms that ministers will be allowed a free vote in the EU referendum.

Cameron says UK is taking more Syrian refugees from outside the EU than other EU countries

Cameron says the UK had accepted 1,000 Syrian refugees from refugee camps by Christmas. It is committed to taking 20,000 by 2020.

Britain is doing better than other countries, he says. He says only 208 refugees have been relocated within Europe out of the 160,000 who are supposed to get relocated under EU plans. (The UK has opted out of that programme.)

And by the time of the December summit, the other EU member states had only resettled 483 refugees from outside the EU.

David Cameron is making his statement now.

He says the EU summit covered migration, terrorism and the renegotiation demanded by the UK.

On migration, he says Schengen countries are trying to put in place “a pale imitation” of the controls that apply at UK borders.

The UK is offering some help to the Schengen countries, he says.

David Cameron in the Commons
David Cameron in the Commons Photograph: Parliament TV

Cameron's statement on his EU renegotiation

David Cameron is about to give a Common statement about last month’s EU summit. At the summit EU leaders spent dinner discussing Cameron’s EU renegotiation, and MPs will spend more than an hour questioning him about how it is going.

Downing Street has already revealed that Cameron will use the session to announce that he will allow ministers a free vote during the EU referendum campaign.

Here is some background reading.

Kenneth Clarke has likened David Cameron to John Major and Jeremy Corbyn as he criticised the prime minister over his decision to allow ministers to campaign on either side of the EU referendum campaign.

As No 10 confirmed that the prime minister would follow the example of Harold Wilson, who suspended collective cabinet responsibility during the 1975 EEC referendum, Clarke warned that Cameron risked looking weak.

The former chancellor, who was a member of Major’s cabinet when the former prime minister railed against Eurosceptic “bastards”, said Cameron was repeating the mistake of appeasing opponents. Clarke also said Cameron would suffer the same fate as Corbyn, who is in open disagreement with key shadow cabinet figures.

David Cameron said on Thursday night that he had found a pathway to progress on his mission to create a new settlement with the European Union, after four hours of make-or-break talks with Britain’s European partners ended with an agreement to find a common solution by February.

In a late night press conference in Brussels, Cameron said the task ahead was very tough, and emphasised that he had not taken his widely rejected demand for a four-year ban on EU migrants receiving UK in-work benefit off the negotiating table.

But other EU leaders said he had backtracked by accepting he could not discriminate against citizens other EU member states.

In perhaps the most encouraging response in the wake of the meeting, Germany’sAngela Merkel said it may be possible to agree to a principle of treaty change now, but to implement those treaty changes later.

Heseltine told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday that this would be a grave mistake. “[Allowing a free vote] would be to make the prime minister a laughing stock across the world,” he said.

He said that insisting on the suspension of collective cabinet responsibility would be “grossly unfair” to Cameron, particularly given what he had achieved in getting the Tories back in power. And he mocked the idea that it would be possible for cabinet ministers to campaign on different sides in the referendum and to then work together amicably afterwards.

“To have a civil war within the Conservative party at that time, in the belief that the referendum having been determined, the participants in the civil war are going to sit around the table and happily smile together, is, I think, rather naive,” he said.

Heseltine also claimed that Harold Wilson’s decision to allow Labour ministers a free vote during the referendum on membership of the EEC in 1975 “split the Labour party” and helped to keep it out of office for years.

Twitter has lurched into “why are we waiting” black humour on the subject of the Labour reshuffle.

Updated

This is from the Independent on Sunday’s John Rentoul. He says Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy secretary, has turned down the chance to be shadow defence secretary.

Here’s Michael Dugger’s new Twitter bio.

Michael Dugher’s Twitter bio
Michael Dugher’s Twitter bio Photograph: Michael Dugher's Twitter bio/Twitter

My colleague Jane Martinson, the Guardian’s head of media, has written an article arguing that Michael Dugher’s sacking highlights Labour’s “almost complete lack of action on newspaper regulation”.

Here’s an extract.

Dugher and his team sent a draft report on the government’s failure to proceed with part two of the Leveson inquiry to Corbyn just before Christmas.

It is presumably still on the leader’s desk, underneath the index cards with the names of possible shadow cabinet team members.

Before this draft plan of action, Dugher had given little indication that the media and its behaviour was high on his agenda. It wasn’t until a report in the Times suggesting that the government was unlikely to continue with Leveson part two that he decided the issue had become a political one.

Is there a record for the longest reshuffle?

This is from ITV’s Adam Smith.

Lunchtime summary

  • Jeremy Corbyn and David Cameron have both been forced to accept the limitations of the power that they have as party leaders in a morning at Westminster that has combined drama with inertia. Corbyn is still engaged in a shadow cabinet reshuffle - and it looks as though we will not get the outcome until late this afternoon at the earliest, more than 24 hours after it started - but he is moving more cautiously than some of his allies wanted and he may have shelved plans to move Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary. Shifting Benn would have triggered a shadow ministerial backlash, and Corbyn seems to have backed away from confrontation. Similarly, Cameron has acknowledged that he does not have the authority to insist on government ministers backing EU membership in the referendum and it has emerged that he will suspend collective responsibility during the campaign. Only last week Downing Street said that Cameron would postpone a decision on this until his EU renegotiation was over. In (his) ideal world Cameron would force ministers to back the government line. But the prospect of mass resignations by ministers determined to campaign for Out has, in practice, made this unworkable as an option.
  • Ten members of the shadow cabinet, and other Labour MPs, have expressed disappointment at Corbyn’s decision to sack Michael Dugher as shadow culture secretary. (See 1.05pm and 1.32pm.) The shadow cabinet comments are relatively restrained, although Andy Burnham suggested sacking Dugher would make it harder for the party to win back traditional supporters in the north, but some other figures were much more critical. (See 12.45pm and 1.34pm.) The backlash gives some indication of what might happen if Corbyn were to sack Hilary Benn

It’s most unfortunate that David [Cameron] is really now seeing the beginning of what is going to be a very difficult task for him to avoid splitting the party as he goes into this referendum campaign.

Last month Lord Heseltine, the Conservative former deputy prime minister, said Cameron would be a global “laughing stock” if he suspended collective cabinet responsibility on this issue.

Updated

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, who was saying this morning that she did not expect Hilary Benn to be moved, says she has heard that this is now back on as a possibility.

There’s a nice line in the New Statesman Labour reshuffle live blog. Actually, several nice lines, but here’s one of them:

Someone has just reached this liveblog by Googling “Who is in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet?”. If you find out, let me know.

The Labour MP Graham Jones says the sacking of Michael Dugher shows that “working-class Labour is dying”.

Updated

Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy secretary, has also expressed regret at Michael Dugher leaving the shadow cabinet. According to the BBC she said:

I’m sorry to see Michael go. I think he’s been a very good shadow transport secretary and since then shadow culture secretary and I’m sure he’ll go on to do very interesting things from the backbenches.

Although it has been reported that we were getting two urgent questions (UQs) today (see 1.11pm), the Saudi Arabia one seems to have been converted into a statement and that may happen to the other one too. UQs come before statements, and the government will not want anything at 3.30pm before David Cameron’s statement on the EU. The Commons authorities have still not announced the full details of what is happening.

In a First Thoughts article for the Guardian Owen Jones says members of the shadow cabinet need to accept that Jeremy Corbyn has a mandate to lead. And Jones has a measured assessment of how the reshuffle is being handled.

When, say, Tony Blair shifted Robin Cook from foreign secretary over differences in foreign policy in 2001 – which would later erupt when the latter resigned over Iraq less than two years later – it was not framed as “revenge”. There is surely no other mainstream party leader in history who has tolerated as much practically open mutiny from his top team as Corbyn. That said, dragging out speculation about a reshuffle was a mistake, distracting focus from the government’s abysmal record. The reshuffle is, in itself, an attempt to correct the chaotic appointment of the shadow cabinet after the leadership election by a team who never thought they would come anywhere close to power.

Here is the article, which is worth reading in full.

The reshuffle is on hold, it seems, because Jeremy Corbyn’s aides are having lunch.

Andy Burnham has apparently been granted an urgent question in the Commons today.

And Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, has got one too.

Nine shadow cabinet members express regret about Dugher's sacking

Ian Murray, the shadow Scottish secretary, has become the latest member of the shadow cabinet to speak out against the sacking of Michael Dugher.

And Chris Bryant, the shadow leader of the Commons, has spoken out too.

By my count nine members of the shadow cabinet have now spoke out to express regret at Dugher’s departure. The others are: Tom Watson, Lucy Powell, Andy Burnham, Gloria De Piero, Luciana Berger, Jon Ashworth, and Vernon Coaker.

(See 10.18am, 10.36am, 10.44am,10.51am, 10.55am and 12.22pm.)

Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh has been told that this coordinated tribute-fest is more about giving Dugher got a “dignified exit” (he’s not dead!) than defying Jeremy Corbyn.

Updated

Here is the Daily Mail’s Jason Groves on the shadow cabinet Dugher tribute operation. (See 10.18am, 10.36am, 10.44am, 10.51am, 10.55am and 12.22pm.)

On Twitter Michael Dugher says Jeremy Corbyn told him he was being sacked because Corbyn did not like the articles he had been writing.

Chris Leslie accuses Corbyn of wanting to 'sideline moderate voices'

On the Daily Politics two Labour MPs have been debating the reshuffle. Chris Leslie, who was shadow chancellor for four months until Jeremy Corbyn became leader, is a Corbyn critic. Cat Smith, a backbencher, is a Corbyn supporter.

Leslie said that the sacking of Michael Dugher would not help the party win the general election and that it showed the intolerance of the “hard left”. He told the programme.

I don’t think [sacking Michael Dugher] will make Labour’s chances of winning [in 2020] any greater. I’m afraid that there is a natural impetus amongst the hard left who want to tighten their control. They want to sideline moderate voices when they have the chance to do so ... I don’t think anybody should be surprised that that is the nature of the hard left.

He also complained that the reshuffle was taking too long, and that it was distracting attention from today’s major government shift on EU policy.

But Smith said Corbyn was entitled to get rid of Dugher. She implied Dugher was disloyal.

Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of the Labour party, is within his rights to pick the people that he wants to serve in his shadow cabinet. And if he doesn’t want people in the shadow cabinet who spend more time attacking the Labour party leadership than the Tory benches opposite us then he is perfectly within his rights to do that.

Cat Smith and Chris Leslie on the Daily Politics
Cat Smith and Chris Leslie on the Daily Politics Photograph: BBC

Updated

The Labour MP John Mann has been a harsh critic of Jeremy Corbyn. But he has defended Corbyn’s right to sack Michael Dugher.

Andy Burnham is definitely not being moved from his post as shadow home secretary, my colleague Frances Perraudin tells me.

And here is some more Labour reaction to the sacking of Michael Dugher.

From Vernon Coaker, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary

From John Woodcock MP

From Toby Perkins, a shadow defence minister

From Iain Wright, the chair of the Commons business committee

From Wes Streeting MP

From Spencer Livermore, Labour’s 2015 general election campaign coordinator

From Paul Richards, a former special adviser

From Luke Akehurst, the Labour activist and secretary of Labour First, a group on the right of the party

The Times’s Francis Elliott has some interesting speculation about the next shadow defence secretary. Nia Griffith is currently the shadow Welsh secretary, and she backed Andy Burnham in the Labour leadership contest.

Jon Lansman, the Labour activist, key Corbyn ally and Momentum founder, has defended the sacking of Michael Dugher.

UPDATE: The Labour MP Graham Morris responded.

Updated

The shadow cabinet meeting planned for 12.45pm has been postponed, a Labour source tells me.

What Michael Dugher said that led to him being sacked

There are many members of the shadow cabinet who have reservations about Jeremy Corbyn’s politics, but no one expressed them as openly as Michael Dugher did before he was sacked this morning. One of Corbyn’s reshuffle aims, according to advance briefings, was to bring more unity to the shadow cabinet and Dugher’s serial dissent seems to have sealed his fate.

Here are some of the comments from Dugher that led to his sacking.

Dugher said: “If you get into things like mandatory reselection you are heading down the Wacky Races road. We’ve played this game before and it doesn’t end well. It’s time to stop our punishment beatings.

“Now is the time to be going after the Tories, not going after each other. It is totally destructive and it’s self-indulgent as well.”

Personally I can’t see the point of Momentum. If it’s an extension of the leadership campaign, well, they won the leadership. The whole point is when you’ve had a leadership election, all the leadership campaigns have to pack up and come together in the Labour party ... It occurred to me that their aggression is matched only by their stupidity. I don’t know what the point of them is. It’s the job of Jeremy and all of us in position in the Labour Party to make sure that the Labour Party gets back in touch. That’s a shared responsibility and a shared burden and you don’t need to create a new faction in the Labour Party which has been susceptible to entryists and which has at times resembled the mob.

I think it might be quite useful if [Corbyn] went along to [the Stop the War Coalition’s Christmas event] because he can have a word with them as their former chairman and say to them ‘stop the intimidation, stop the abuse and stop the talk of deselections and going after Labour MPs who voted in a way they didn’t approve of’ ... What you’ve got to remember about a lot of these people in Stop the War is that they think the wrong people won the cold war. To say I might have a slightly world view is an understatement. Communism in a modern setting doesn’t have a lot of appeal to me.

We should make a virtue of our differences and be able to have debates. This is the new politics. I’m not sure how revenge reshuffles sits with the new politics.

In recent weeks we’ve seen repeated media stories that Jeremy Corbyn is planning a “revenge reshuffle”. A variety of sources, some of whom have been attributed as being “aides” to Jeremy or those “close” to the leader have apparently stood up speculation that Hilary Benn, Rosie Winterton, Maria Eagle and me (amongst others) are all for the chop for not voting against extending military action from Iraq into Syria during the recent free vote in the Commons.

My sympathies have particularly been with Hilary Benn. He must have felt like Man Utd boss Louis van Gaal over Christmas, constantly reading in the newspapers that he is about to be sacked.

Depressingly, whilst Hilary was hard at work in his Leeds constituency talking to residents who had been hit by awful flooding, he had a tweet from those good comrades at the Huddersfield branch of Momentum (apparently tweeted from Gravesend) saying: “Shadow Cabinet reshuffle soon lad. So you’ll have more time to spend with your constituents”.

The shadow culture secretary, Michael Dugher, one of those believed to be at risk in the impending reorganisation, told BBC 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics programme that previous Labour leaders he had worked closely with had been reluctant to “go down the path of big reshuffles”.

“They do try and hold the party together, they do recognise that the Labour party is a broad church, not a religious cult, that you need people of different backgrounds and try and get the best possible talents,” Dugher said, adding that “ultimately [the makeup of the shadow cabinet] will be a decision for Jeremy”.

At Labour’s last conference the slogan was “straight talking”. Perhaps Dugher (pictured below speaking at the conference) took that too literally.

Michael Dugher
Michael Dugher Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Updated

And here’s a tribute to Michael Dugher from Jon Ashworth, the shadow minister without portfolio.

I have been friends with Michael since I was 16. He’s one of Labour’s most impressive campaigners and I know he will continue campaigning hard for the party he loves to win elections.

Updated

And the Dugher tributes keep coming. This one is from Gloria De Piero, the shadow minister for young people and voter registration.

In over 20 years of friendship with Michael I have witnessed his tireless commitment and determination to work for a Labour government and I know that will continue on the backbenches. But it’s always sad to lose someone from an ordinary background from the shadow cabinet.

And this is from Luciana Berger, the shadow minister for mental health.

Michael has shown great passion and dedication to his brief as shadow culture secretary. He is a skilled campaigner who worked hard to widen access to arts and culture, to protect small music venues and to promote grassroots sport.

Updated

Burnham suggests sacking Dugher won't help party win back traditional supporters in the north

Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary (at least, we think he’s still shadow home secretary), has also put out a statement about Michael Dugher. Burnham suggests that sacking Dugher will make it harder for the party to win back traditional supporters in the north.

Michael is Labour to the core and I have no doubt that he will continue to serve the best interests of our part in whatever way he can.

We face a big challenge in winning back the trust of our traditional supporters in the North and the Midlands and Michael is one of the authentic voices who can do that.

I thank him for all the support he has given me and wish him well.

He has served Labour with distinction and can leave the frontbench with his head held high.

Lucy Powell says Dugher's sacking is a 'loss' to the shadow cabinet

Lucy Powell, the shadow education secretary, has also described Michael Dugher’s sacking as a “loss” to the shadow cabinet. In a statement she said:

Michael is a formidable campaigner who has provided an important and authentic voice to the shadow cabinet. Him going is a loss.

Michael Dugher, who has just been sacked as shadow culture secretary, is one of the many figures who got to the top of the Labour party after starting out as a Whitehall special adviser. He worked for Stephen Byers when Byers was secretary of state for transport, local government and the regions, and then for Geoff Hoon when he was defence secretary (at the time of the Iraq war) and then leader of the Commons.

Byers and Hoon were perceived as uber-Blairites. But special advisers do not always share identical politics with the ministers for whom they work and Dugher is not a classic Blairite. He worked for a union before he became a special adviser, and he comes from a working-class background and it is better to see him as a representative of the traditional Labour right. After Tony Blair left office Dugher went to Number 10 to work as Gordon Brown’s political spokeman. As a spin doctor he was combative and loyal and, after being elected as an MP in 2010, one of his jobs in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet involved coordinating party presentation.

Dugher ran Andy Burnham’s leadership election campaign and it was reportedly Bunham who insisted on Dugher being included in Jeremy Corbyn’s first shadow cabinet as a condition for Burnham serving as shadow home secretary. But Dugher has repeatedly criticised developments in the party under Corbyn, which is why he has been sacked. His perceived problem was not competence but loyalty.

Dugher claims he was sacked for criticising Corbyn's aides

Michael Dugher says he was sacked because he criticised the conduct of some of Jeremy Corbyn’s aides.

Tom Watson says sacking of Michael Dugher marks a 'loss' to the shadow cabinet

Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, has put out a statement paying tribute to Michael Dugher. In it, Watson makes it clear that that Dugher’s sacking marks a “loss” to the shadow cabinet. Watson said:

Michael Dugher is a rare politician - a talented working-class MP who hasn’t lost his strong Yorkshire roots.

Politicians with his ability and commitment can make a difference in any role. Labour’s loss in the shadow cabinet will be compensated for by Michael’s free thought on the backbenches.

Michael Dugher sacked as shadow culture secretary

Michael Dugher has been sacked as shadow culture secretary.

Ministers 'to get a free vote in EU referendum'

According to the BBC, David Cameron will announce in his Commons statement this afternoon that ministers will be allowed a free vote in the EU referendum. Collective responsibility will be suspended, meaning ministers won’t have to support the government position (which we presume will be that Britain should stay in a reformed EU.)

https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/684313644197347338

Updated

Here are more details of what Ken Livingstone, the former Labour mayor of London and key Corbyn ally, said about the reshuffle on Radio 5 Live earlier. (See 9.03am.)

  • Livingstone said he did not think Jeremy Corbyn ever intended to sack Hilary Benn.

I’m not certain he had any intention of getting rid of Hilary Benn.

  • Livingstone said that Benn had become much less critical of Corbyn in recent weeks. This would explain a decision not to move or sack him, Livingstone suggested.

If you look, Hilary Benn’s role has significantly played, the way he has played it. Up until the vote on Isis he has often been quite critical, and disagreeing with Jeremy [Corbyn]. But the following week, after the Oldham byelection, I don’t think I’ve heard him dissenting about anything since ...

Hilary Benn has stopped being quite so dissident and critical since the Oldham byelection.

  • Livingstone claimed that Corbyn’s team were not to blame for briefing the media in advance about plans for a wide-ranging reshuffle that would remove Corbyn’s critics. Livingstone suggested the media were to blame for over-playing speculation from Corbyn’s critics. Livingstone said:

All of this speculation, none of it has come from Jeremy Corbyn or his core advisers. They are really quite angry about it. It started out with how I was going to be given a peerage and brought into the cabinet. Never heard a word about that. Then it’s all about sacking Hilary Benn.

There’s just a huge number of people out there in the Labour party who wander round telling newspapers what they think. But it’s all speculation. There is a small embittered group like Mandelson who are trying to undermine him. This is our media. You have got to fill up 24 hours a day of the news, and any story just gets dragged on and on and on.

  • He claimed that MPs had changed their view of Corbyn since the Oldham byelection victory.

There were a lot of Labour MPs who were shocked when Jeremy became leader because they thought he could never win an election. The Oldham byelection, which was the best we’ve ever had in 115 years of the Labour party in Oldham, has caused a lot of them, I think, to think perhaps Jeremy can win. And a lot of that criticism inside the PLP has tended to drain away.

  • He said Corbyn had brought democracy back to the party.

If anyone in the cabinet came out against a Tony Blair policy, they were sacked immediately. It was the most rigid regime in which everyone had to follow the line. Sometimes cabinet meetings only lasted 20 minutes - it was like a rubber stamp. Jeremy has brought back democracy to the party. That means people will disagree and dissent.

Conor Pope at LabourList, who is also running a live blog, thinks Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy secretary, is unlikely to move to defence to replace Maria Eagle because “she is happy in her current brief and would be reluctant to move.”

The lawyer and legal blogger Carl Gardner thinks Maria Eagle could be going to justice, to replace Lord Falconer. She was a solicitor before she became an MP.

The shadow cabinet meeting is now due at 12.45pm, Sky’s Sophy Ridge reports.

Here’s the BBC’s Norman Smith’s take on what is happening in the Labour reshuffle.

Ken Livingstone says Hilary Benn has now stopped being so critical of Corbyn

Ken Livingstone, the former Labour mayor of London and a key Corbyn ally, has been talking about the reshuffle on Radio 5 Live.

This is a marked changed, because only yesterday Livingstone was saying that Benn should be moved.

Matt Chorley has just taken over from Philip Webster writing the Times’s Red Box morning politics news email. Here’s his take on the Labour reshuffle.

Revenge, it seems, is a dish best served in the style of Julie Walters carrying two soupsacross a small restaurant: interminably slow and inept with most of it slopping on to the floor long before it can be properly digested.

Here’s George Eaton, the New Statesman’s political editor, speculating on what the final reshuffle outcome will be.

It is day two of the Labour reshuffle, and you have to go back to the weary days of the Northern Ireland peace process talks in the 1990s to recall a time when so many reporters waited so long to learn so little. As readers of yesterday’s live blog will remember, the Corbyn reshuffle doorstep yielded very little.

But we did find out that Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, seemed to be in a good mood when he left Corbyn’s office making no comment. And Maria Eagle, the shadow defence secretary, seemed unhappy after her Corbyn interview, although she was equally tight-lipped. Sometimes mood and appearance can be reliable indicators, and this morning the BBC is reporting that Benn will keep his job, and that Eagle will be moved, but not demoted. This is from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

A senior Labour figure has said that Jeremy Corbyn has “backed down” and the shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, will stay in his job. The shadow defence secretary, Maria Eagle, has been told that she will be moved, but will not be demoted. However, Jeremy Corbyn’s office last night insisted that no final decisions have been taken. Final details of changes to the shadow cabinet are expected later today.

I have not been able to confirm this, but there is meant to be a shadow cabinet meeting at 12pm today so, with luck, we may get an official announcement before then.

Later, at 3.30pm, David Cameron will be making a statement to MPs about last month’s Brussels summit and his EU renegotiation. I will be covering that in detail.

I will be focusing on those two stories during the day, although I will cover other political developments too.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on@AndrewSparrow.

I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Anya Taylor-Joy ‘Threw Up’ The First Time She Recorded Princess Peach Lines For The Super Mario Bros. Movie
That does sound pretty intense.
Cinemablend
Cinemablend
I accidentally used hugelkultur to fill my deep planter – and it's saved me a small fortune on soil and my plants are thriving too
It turns out it's a genius, budget-friendly gardening method
Ideal Home
Ideal Home
‘I am in shock’: Woman goes to auction in rural Pennsylvania. Then she spots boxes labeled Chanel, Hermes, Cartier
Thrifting’s been all the rage for literally ages. There’s also been a bit of a thrifting renaissance thanks to the advent of TikTok popularizing thrift hauls. But when’s the last time you heard about an auction?
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
David Bowie Trailblazed the 'Everyday Exhibits' Trend in His '70s Living Room With A Retro Twist on Curated Clutter – It's Playful, Practical, and Replicable
A photo from 1971 shows that the musician was tapping into personality-led interiors long before they were a trend – experts say his look is the blueprint
Homes & Gardens
Homes & Gardens
McDonald’s burger prices vary a whopping 74% depending on where you live. Here is the cheapest state
The Big Arch burger contains 1,020 calories and 53 grams of protein and varies in price across the country
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
How to shop at the farmers’ market like a pro
Tips from experts on where to find the freshest fruits and veggies
The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play