Andy McSmith's Diary: On-message Jeremy Corbyn leaves the Shadow Cabinet gobsmacked

The Labour leader told this Shadow Cabinet that there must be more message discipline

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with Deputy Leader Tom Watson, right, and candidate Jim McMahon, in Oldham, last week (Getty Images)

Jeremy Corbyn reduced his Shadow Cabinet to stunned silence at their weekly meeting by pronouncing that there must be more message discipline. This came from the man they remember as having set some sort of record during 32 years on the back benches for the number of times he rebelled against the Labour leadership, with no concern at all for message discipline.

He spoke of collective responsibility and working together, even suggesting that shadow cabinet members should run their statements and interventions past his office.

Previous leaders have demanded the same – but in this case, it raised the spectre of senior MPs having to consult Corbyn’s policy adviser, Andrew Fisher, currently suspended from the Labour Party, or the former Guardian journalist Seumas Milne, before they are allowed to speak.

Oddly, his words were directed not at the majority of the Shadow Cabinet, who openly oppose him over Trident, but at his own allies. Last week, Diane Abbott chaired a meeting of the Stop the War Coalition, at which a shadow Foreign minister, Catherine West, announced that Labour would consult the group before deciding whether to back intervention in Syria. The shadow Foreign Secretary, Hilary Benn, was furious, and let Corbyn know what he thought privately. It was that which made Corbyn’s thoughts turn to discipline.

How did his team respond to his homily? “They were gobsmacked,” I am told.

MPs keeping abreast

In the 1970s, Labour MP Helene Hayman created a sensation by breastfeeding in Parliament. It had never been done before, and has seldom been done since, but it should be considered a normal part of parliamentary life, the Labour MP Jess Phillips argued , during a Commons debate on how to make Parliament more family friendly. She reckoned it should be allowed in the Chamber and during committee meetings because – speaking from experience – she said: “Putting off breastfeeding your baby feels like you are going to explode.”

About that PC problem...

Theresa May’s speeches do not usually contain good jokes or funny stories, but one she told MPs was a gem. “I was having a meeting in my office,” she said, “when part way through a conversation, the telephone on my desk rang. My private secretary got up to take the call. When she finished the call, she was looking perplexed. ‘You are never going to believe this,’ she said, ‘But that was the IT department. They want to know if they still need to come up to your office… to fix the problem with Charles Clarke’s computer.’” Charles Clarke was Home Secretary in 2006.

Cameron’s Le Pen pal

David Cameron has an admirer in Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right French Front National. “I am so happy to see David Cameron doing in the UK what I want to do for France,” the politician known as “Madam Frexit” has told the Bloomberg agency. “He is using the months ahead to get what he wants for his country, and we want that, too, more sovereignty for France.”

Not so sweet tweet

Any prominent Scot who opposes breaking up the UK can expect to be attacked – but this tweet from the blogger known as Wings over Scotland, about the country’s only Labour MP, Ian Murray, is choice, even by the standards of Scottish polemics: “I hope an aeroplane delivering dirty needles to an incinerator crashes on to Ian Murray tonight.” The Wings over Scotland blog was set up by an online journalist named Stuart Campbell, who lives in Somerset.

Passage to Ireland

The Republic of Ireland is feeling the effect of Theresa May’s clampdown on foreign students who overstay. The number of Pakistanis claiming political asylum in the Republic has increased eightfold this year. They are mostly students wanting to stay on, who go from England to Scotland, by car ferry to Northern Ireland, and then across the border. “They seem to think by living in two EU states, rather than one, this increases their chances,” Sue Conlon, of the Irish Refugee Council, told the Irish Times.