Corbyn's earned the right to do what he pleases – and he's decided to leave mewling self-entitled Blairites out in the cold

Some have returned with their tails between their legs, but many more of Labour’s ‘big beasts’ have remained noticeably absent

From what passes these days for the anti-Corbyn resistance, the hush could rupture an eardrum. The Great Leader has reshuffled his front bench team for the first time in far too long (late June to be precise) – and though he has again snubbed those known to the pundits as “Labour’s big beasts”, you’d need a bloodhound’s nose to pick up a scent of rebellion.

Nothing endures for five minutes in this dazzlingly turbulent era, and most of us have learned to avoid predicting anything beyond tomorrow lunchtime. The one vague likelihood is that things will change dramatically, and in the way least expected. No one, as the scriptwriter William Goldman said about the movies, knows anything. But for now at least, Corbyn’s internal dominance appears to verge on the absolute.

The kamikaze election Theresa May expected would give her the authority to remove Philip Hammond from the Treasury has left her too enfeebled to shove the undersecretary of state for paperclips sideways to ring-binders.

Corbyn, on the other hand, could appoint Roger de Courcey and Nookie Bear as joint Shadow Defence Secretaries with barely a squeak of outrage. If he ennobled Jim Davidson and made him Labour’s race and women’s equality supremo in the Lords, his “best prime minister?” rating would nudge up a couple of points.

Although the appointments he has made – and more revealingly the ones he hasn’t made – look almost mundane, the recall for Roberta Blackman Woods (nope, me neither) qualifies as a minor curiosity. In her dramatic resignation letter after the failed post-Brexit coup – what a JFK moment that was – Blackman Woods informed Jez: “I no longer have confidence in you as a leader … You could, and should, have shown more decisive and visionary leadership and your failure to step down means that I must.”

The Corbyn Imperium having arisen despite that grievous blow, Blackman Woods has heroically overcome those doubts to join Labour’s International Development team.

And if you’re wondering about all that street party bunting, and why the fatted calf is being lowered onto the barbie, hallelujah and hosanna, another prodigal daughter is welcomed home. Gloria De Piero returns as a spokesperson at Justice. The second Shadow minister to resign after Brexit has also adroitly reprogrammed herself into a true believer. So gloria in excelcis for that.

Yet while Corbyn shows that he loveth some sinners that repenteth by bringing back half a dozen reformed refuseniks, unlike heaven he cannot bring himself to loveth them all.

If Chuka Umunna is a “big beast”, the role model for the guy who quit the 2015 leadership election in terror of being doorstepped is the Cowardly Lion. After Umunna’s pro-UK single market Commons manoeuvre of last week, the Mighty Jez has chosen to leave him on the hard shoulder of the Yellow Brick Road.

Angela Eagle, whose splendidly hapless 2015 leadership campaign suggested she should have followed Umunna’s lead, indicated her gracious consent to a return. But Corbyn feels he can struggle on without her, and also without soldier Dan Jarvis who remains confined to barracks.

You might be more perplexed about a couple of the overlooked. Radio 2’s Ed Miliband is a clever, thoughtful man, and has become popular in the way losers do in Britain when they plough pluckily on through the quagmire of public derision. He would be a useful addition.

Finally, after all her years as a Brownite android, Yvette Cooper has developed into a recognisably human politician. She may lack the incumbent’s mastery of fine detail. Even so, and without too many magic mushrooms, you can imagine Cooper making a more persuasive Shadow Home Secretary than Diane Abbott had she returned to her previous job.

It could be that at the next election, whether in a few months or years, Corbyn could use some reliable old hands in key positions to reassure those who voted Labour last time in the misguided assumption that the party couldn’t win this side of Doomsday. Voting for a party without a prayer isn’t the same as voting for one on the edge of power.

But doubting Corbyn has become a riskier participation sport than surfing with sharks. For the moment he is the omnipotent, omniscient god of Labour, and as such the reshuffle strikes a nice biblical balance.

He has played the cheek-turning Jesus by doling out minor jobs to De Piero and the rest. So far as the grander posts, albeit in a quieter and more benign way than his more lavishly bearded Old Testament predecessor, he has been a vengeful Lord towards false prophets who forsook him.

A hunch says that the identity of those in the shadows count for very little in an age of presidential politics when the leaders gobble up all the sunlight, though he may pay a price for favouring obscure rookies over hardened pros. If only we had the recent precedent of a little-known Labour backbencher being vaulted into the public eye.

Either way, Jeremy Corbyn has more than earned the right to do just as he pleases, and leave the mewling self-entitled pygmies of neo-Blairism to keep their stuck pig squealing about the folly of it all to themselves.