Corbyn's Cabinet Reshuffle Sees the Messiah Assume His Final Shape

On Thursday evening, the Corbyn machine powered into its third major reshuffle, and this time, despite having a far smaller brace of MPs to choose from, it was all far less omnishambolic than usual.

Who could forget the legendary weeklong reshuffle of January 2016? Like a Geoffrey Boycott innings, it dragged on until it had ground down any opposition through sheer tedium. Like the Hundred Years War, it was so long that by the time it ended, no one could figure out what had prompted it in the first place.

Jeremy had won the war, now he needed to win the peace. The question was, would this be a South Africa 1994 peace? Or a Turkey 2016 one? As soon as Diane Abbott's name was slotted into the Shadow Home Secretary peg, we had our answer: he was going full Erdogan. There would be disappearances. Knuckles bursting in police cells. The sizzle of electric wire against genitalia. Abbott was once alleged to have been Jeremy's lover, but more lately has become his chief attack dog. They make a great double act – the Jay and Silent Bob of neo-Marxism. He does the hand-wringing, she does the finger-jabbing.

The next big name confirmed the shift. Smoothie Clive Lewis was one of Jeremy's earliest supporters in the 2015 leadership race. But then, he also has a mind of a his own, opposing the leader over Trident. Sure enough, the regime sent him off for some re-education in the Business portfolio, installing the anti-Trident Nia Griffith as Shadow Defence Secretary in his stead.

Even down in the engine rooms of the party machinery, the screws were being turned. Out went Rosie Winterton, who'd been installed as chief whip at the start of Ed Miliband's tenure. Conscientious and principled, she'd been considered an important bridge between The Moderates and The Jezuits, but Jeremy wasn't here to build bridges any more, he was shelling them, so in her place came Nick Brown, who'd first done the job in 1997.

In terms of people who owed their entire career directly to the patronage of the leader, they don't come much more owned than Shami Chakrabarti, whose three-month rise to the top of British politics was completed when she became Shadow Attorney General, managing the portfolio from her newly-taken seat in the Lords, only a few weeks after helpfully clearing Labour of anti-semitism allegations. In years gone by, Corbyn spent much of his political education attending soirees at Tony Benn's house, where the lugubrious pipe-toker would pose his famous "five questions", but sadly the democracy/electability bit seems to have passed Jeremy by. In terms of keeping your friends close and enemies closer, only Deputy Leader Tom Watson, found himself back inside the tent and pissing out, at the Culture portfolio.

The enhanced levels of radicalism were even visible in pan-back. By 8PM on Thursday, Jeremy's team issued a press release stating that if you factored in Lewis, Abbott, Shami and Dawn Butler, this was "the most ethnically diverse shadow cabinet ever". Cheers went up all over working-class Northern neighbourhoods – finally, British leftism could walk itself off an electoral cliff while looking exactly like an audience on BBC1's The Big Questions.

One of the quirks of any reshuffle is that it can be a bit like reading the OED's Words Of The Year list: you get to notice which hot issues have grown their own ministries. With Butler's appointment, for instance, "diverse communities" have their own ministry, in the same way that Scotland or Northern Ireland do. "Mental Health" is its own portfolio – again. And, no longer content to just be part of the Home Office brief, domestic violence does too.

Sarah Champion, the new holder of that post, is an unusual choice, mainly because she'd been forced to admit during this year's party conference that she herself was once dragged down to a cell on an abuse accusation, after her husband called the cops on her as their marriage disintegrated. But instead of having her political career torpedoed, she got to give a bit of mea culpa interview to the Mirror, admitting that it was a "difficult time" and she was "feeling very vulnerable".

To make way for Abbott, another of those pale stale males had to stop stinking up the shadow cabinet table. But then, Andy Burnham had already announced his own departure two weeks earlier, after deciding to run for Manchester mayor. Burnham's continued existence always seemed to be a phantasm, 'standing by' the leader throughout the summer's troubles like a gormless red-rosetted mannequin, his departure was fittingly ghostly.

Then, the final piece of the puzzle. With the cabinet in lockdown, The Mandate secure, and the whips office under the thumb, attention turned to the National Executive Committee – vital for setting the rules of any future leadership contest, as this summer's two court cases showed. Corbyn offered John Ashworth the Health portfolio, in exchange for giving up his seat on the NEC, meaning that the crucial voting balance was decisively tipped from Moderates to Corbynites. Now, after 12 months of wrangles, niggles, High Court appearances, mass resignations and underhanded back-briefings, the war is mainly won.

There was even an epilogue, when Jeremy promoted his replacement. Keir Starmer, now Shadow Minister for Brexit, was the highly fancied former Director of Public Prosecutions, most notable for looking like a West Wing casting version of a PM, and being quite competent. One day, Keir may be asked to mop up what's left, then try and flog it to the electorate under his adorable dimples. For now, a measure of mop-up remains, but overall, The Messiah has assumed his final shape.

@gavhaynes

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