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MICHAEL DUGHER paid the price for his own “incompetence” and “disloyalty” yesterday as he was kicked out of the shadow cabinet by Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr Dugher moaned on Twitter that he had been “sacked by Jeremy Corbyn for too much straight talking” after losing his job as shadow culture secretary.
But a senior Labour source told the Morning Star that the Barnsley East MP only had himself to blame for his relegation to the back benches.
The source described how, far from encouraging debate, Mr Dugher would become “abusive” at shadow cabinet meetings and openly sent details of the discussions to the Tory press.
“Michael Dugher directed an unprecedented level of public and private abuse towards Jeremy Corbyn,” according to the source.
“He openly flouted Jeremy’s authority in a way which challenged the elected leader of the party but had nothing to do with constructive criticism or open debate.
“His claims to represent working-class politics are laughable — loyalty and solidarity were alien concepts to him.
“No previous leader would have tolerated this behaviour for 24 hours, let alone three months.”
And front-bench MP Cat Smith told the BBC: “Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of the Labour Party, is within his rights to pick the people that he wants to serve in his shadow cabinet.
“And if he doesn’t want people in the shadow cabinet who spend more time attacking the Labour Party leadership than the Tory benches opposite us, then he is perfectly within his rights to do that.”
Mr Corbyn’s supporters hit back after some Labour MPs took to social media to criticise Mr Dugher’s departure from the shadow cabinet.
Shadow home secretary Andy Burnham, whose leadership campaign Mr Dugher ran, said: “We face a big challenge in winning back the trust of our traditional supporters in the north and the Midlands and Michael is one of the authentic voices who can do that.”
Haslingden and Hyndburn MP Graham Jones wrote: “With the sacking of Dugher, traditional working-class Labour is dying.”
However, John Mann — who is far from being a Corbynite — dismissed their protests at Mr Dugher’s demise as “guff,” adding: “He’s a mate of mine. But Corbyn won. It’s politics.”
Mr Dugher’s record in his culture, media and sport brief was also openly criticised by people in the sector.
Poet Michael Rosen revealed that the shadow minister had not bothered to reply to a letter from a group of PCS union members about cuts to museum funding.
“Perhaps this great ‘loss’ (say Blairites) [is that] he ‘lost’ the letter,” he quipped.
A Labour source added: “He was incompetent at his role in shadowing the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.
“He had nothing to say on BBC cuts or the privatisation of Channel 4, preferring to brief the media even from within shadow cabinet meetings to doing his job.”
Mr Dugher was a former special adviser to ultra-Blairite Stephen Byers and is a current vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel.
He has branded grassroots group Momentum a “mob” and called the Unite union “too political.”
As the Star went to press, he was the only shadow minister to have been sacked completely.
Mr Corbyn’s reshuffle aims to create a more “coherent” top team by moving off-message shadow ministers including Maria Eagle.
