Jeremy Corbyn's 'Revenge Reshuffle' Was the Longest Bottle-Job in Political History

A grateful planet awoke this morning to the news that Labour had got to the end of the longest shadow cabinet reshuffle in modern politics. Over two days it became clear that Jeremy Corbyn shuffles like he bows – slowly and imperceptibly. In the build up, Jeremy was predicted to rid his shadow cabinet of his doubters and fill it with allies. In the aftermath it became clear that not much had really happened at all.

Pro-Trident shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle was replaced by anti-nuke MP for Islington South and Finsbury, Emily Thornberry. Shadow culture secretary Michael Dugher and shadow Europe Minister Pat McFadden were sacked for disloyalty. Meanwhile, Corbyn's most significant cabinet adversary, Hilary Benn, remains in his place. This seeming non-event was enough to send the party into meltdown.

At least in their presentation, reshuffles tend to be fairly straightforward. This was anything but. After a tense Monday – where Westminster journalists hung around in a lobby trying to eavesdrop on a late-night meeting, only for nothing to be decided – the ball finally got rolling on Tuesday morning. Michael Dugher MP announced that he had been sacked from his shadow culture secretary role, sending a tweet with so much sassitude it may as well have had a *paints nails* emoji tacked on at the end:

It's the sort of "happy new year" you scream as you storm out the door at 3AM on New Year's Day after finding out the person who's been flirting with you all night is now making out with someone else.

But that one passive aggressive flourish from a man who had routinely cussed his leader's politics is all pundits had to go on. It was, we were told, all going to be finished by a shadow cabinet meeting at 12.45PM on Tuesday. Then that was delayed. 12.45PM came and went. Corbyn's inner circle of advisors went for lunch. Live-bloggers blogged about how much they wished they too could break for lunch, while presumably sending an intern to Pret. The Guardian live-blog praised the quality of writing on the New Statesman live-blog in a desperate attempt to say anything at all. The very concept of live-blogs in an era of "consensus politics" was questioned.

By 3PM, Dugher had changed his Twitter bio to "MP for Barnsley East. Sacked by Jeremy Corbyn for too much straight talking, honest politics." That was one of Tuesday's highlights. At times it felt like Corbyn was actually trolling the journalists, bidding them a pleasant evening as he sauntered past to pick up a Boost and a big bag of Doritos to keep his aides going late. It was as if Team Corbyn thought their deliberations were somehow more important that the workloads and lifestyles of political journalists who had somewhere better to be.

For weeks now this shake-up has been talked about as a "revenge reshuffle". Overblown language in the prelude to the reshuffle reached its apex when a Labour frontbencher told the Sunday Times, "They want to shoot some people like Dugher in the car park to create some room to bring in young Corbynistas." But really, painting Corbyn as the aggressor when his opponents were naming themselves after French resistance fighters before he even won is to invert what's actually going on.

When he announced his shadow cabinet in September, he made sure it was a "unifying" team, ensuring there was adequate representation both for those who backed him and those who hated him. Rather than using his massive electoral mandate to relegate his enemies to the kind of irrelevant carping he'd been used to, he hoped that if he was nice to them they might pipe down a bit. This was the new politics: people who love Corbyn and people who really, really wish someone else was leader all getting along in one happy tent. (In fairness, there was probably little else he could do since so few people in the parliamentary party actually liked him.)

But by placating those plotting his downfall, it seemed that Corbyn had borked his entire project. In avoiding an initial political migraine of enraging those who hated him even more, he had guaranteed himself a headache that is surely set to recur again and again. As French Revolutionary Louis Antoine de Saint-Just said, "Those who make revolutions by half dig their own tombs." (Then again, that guy was known as the "Angel of Death", so maybe it would be bad PR for Corbyn to follow his advise too closely – but you get the idea.)

Corbyn wanted to square the circle by getting rid of collective responsibility – drop the pretence that cabinet members all totally agree on everything like some sort of hive mind and face up to the fact that political differences happen.

But in early December, a real life and death question emerged over whether or not to bomb Syria, and it tested the philosophy of being a bit blah about being leader to the limit. In another example of the harmonious new world of consensus politics, Corbyn decided it was up to the conscience of his cabinet and MPs how they wanted to vote. If you want to rain death from thousands of feet to maintain Britain's credibility on the international stage, that's totally chill, man, so long as we're cool. Except it wasn't chill, really, and the Labour Party wasn't cool. Hilary Benn stood up in the House of Commons and basically told the world that his party leader was a yellow-bellied hippy. Jeremy gave the back of Hilary's head the death stare to end all death stares – a neat display of his impotence.

Columnists fell over themselves to declare it one of the all-time great speeches and worthy of a real Labour leader, since the real Labour Party exists mainly to decide where we should bomb next.

From then, the stage seemed to be set: surely Jezza would have to put Hilary in his place. The rumours of revenge started. An MP stoked speculation by telling the Sunday Times that "to move Hilary [Benn] would be an act of war", despite the fact the real war was declared on Syria, with Hilary's help, in December.

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When it came to it, in a two-day showdown, Jezza blinked first. As the negotiations continued yesterday, Jez appeared in the Commons and Hilary sat behind him, aggressively fake smiling into the back of Jeremy's head, inverting the Corbyn death-stare. Supposedly they had come to a pact where Benn would keep his job but keep any disagreements private. This morning, John McDonnell confusingly said Benn could disagree from the back benches while keeping his front bench job. Benn, meanwhile, said, "I haven't been muzzled. I'm going to be carrying on doing my job exactly as before," presumably meaning that the next grandstanding speech about how Corbyn is completely wrong about something is just around the corner.

Hours and hours of working out who could be sacked without causing a mutiny boiled down to, in effect, nothing. And a mutiny is happening anyway, with frontbenchers Jonathan Reynolds, Stephen Doughty and Kevan Jones resigning in protest at some relatively minor sackings. The mediocrities whose heads have rolled are being beatified as political titans and turned into martyrs. Party figures who were never in favour of a more consensual politics are now criticising Corbyn for abandoning that idea. This is all in the name of making Labour popular once more, which must be achieved via complete contempt for the popular surge that voted in Corbyn. Jezza, meanwhile, looks weaker than ever, and might be wondering why he ever hired a bunch of people who were seemingly always going to walk. He may now be wishing he'd gone in with both barrels a few months ago and found a way to promote some loyal Momentum activists to sit alongside him.

@SimonChilds13

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