Daily catch-up: Abuse 'has no place in politics', except when Corbyn accuses his shadow ministers of 'incompetence and disloyalty'

Jeremy Corbyn has laboured mightily and at length, and brought forth a mouse of a reshuffle. Emily Thornberry, who wants to get rid of the UK's nuclear weapons, has been appointed shadow defence secretary. Maria Eagle, who wants to keep them, has been moved from defence to culture, media and sport. Pat Glass has been appointed shadow Europe minister. Pat McFadden and Michael Dugher have been sacked from the Europe and culture posts. Hilary Benn, shadow foreign secretary, keeps his job for the moment, having apparently undertaken not to disagree with his leader in public.

McFadden was guilty of "disloyal" statements, according to John McDonnell, the shadow Chancellor, on BBC Radio 4 Today this morning. Dugher was guilty of "incompetence and disloyalty" according to Labour leadership sources last night. A rather unwise and unnecessary descent into idle insult from the team that promised that "abuse and intimidation have no place in politics".

• I wrote for The Independent today comparing and contrasting the management of front-bench divisions by Corbyn and David Cameron. Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced that ministers would be allowed, after he had concluded his renegotiation, to campaign for Britain to leave the EU in the referendum. The doctrine of collective responsibility is a flexible one in both main parties, as both contain fundamental differences of opinion. But Cameron has managed his irreconcileables with such sinuousness that – unless the renegotiation goes horribly wrong – all is already lost for the Better Off Outers. Yesterday the Prime Minister presented what he was asking for in Europe as "at the outside edge of what we can achieve", which I take to mean "something that has already been agreed in principle".

• Corbyn has also handled his party's divisions with some skill, especially when you consider how isolated he is in his own parliamentary party. He is half way to converting the party's policy to the full Stop the War wish list. But the presentation of his shadow cabinet changes over the past two days has been pure Thick of It omnishambles. I was told yesterday that part of the problem was that people did not actually refuse to move but said that they'd rather not take the post offered. One shadow minister who did refuse to move was Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy and climate change secretary. She denied that she turned down the offer of the defence post, but I am told that when the subject was raised she said she didn't want it before it could actually be offered to her.

One reason the reshuffle took so long is that Corbyn's bad temper meant that things that had been agreed became not agreed.​ I'm told he was "as angry as a man who lives on lentils can be".