Rebecca Long-Bailey, the MP for Salford, has been promoted to the job of shadow business secretary, as Jeremy Corbyn replaces the members of the shadow cabinet who resigned rather than vote to trigger article 50 and begin the Brexit process.

Long-Bailey, a solicitor and close ally of John McDonnell who is regarded by some as a potential successor to Corbyn, takes the place of Clive Lewis, the Norwich South MP who resigned on Wednesday night before voting against the government’s Brexit bill.

Labour also announced that the Workington MP Sue Hayman would be shadow environment secretary; the Neath MP Christina Rees would be shadow Welsh secretary; and the Bootle MP Peter Dowd would replace Long-Bailey as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury.

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Corbyn has carried out five reshuffles since taking the leadership in 2015, in response to a series of resignations including the mass walkout that preceded Owen Smith’s leadership challenge last summer.

Long-Bailey, the daughter of a Salford docker, whose 2015 election campaign was backed by the Unite trade union, is Corbyn’s fourth shadow business secretary – a key position, given the party’s hope of winning back its reputation for economic competence.

The Brexit bill will now move on to the House of Lords, where Labour has tabled eight amendments. Angela Smith, Labour’s leader in the Lords, hopes to push the government to make a firmer commitment on giving parliament a meaningful vote on the final deal and to safeguard the rights of EU citizens.

Lady Smith told the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast that she had no intention of being scared off by threats from the government about curtailing the powers of the Lords were it interfered. “We’re seeing particularly some Tory MPs almost harking back to the old westerns: this is High Noon and we’re going to have a gunslingers battle. That’s not how we operate,” she said.

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“People have personal views. I voted for remain, I campaigned for remain. It is inconceivable to me that having had a referendum and a House of Commons vote to invoke A50, that I as an unelected peer should say I think that’s wrong. And I think that’s the overwhelming view in the House of Lords.

“I hope we don’t have this mock outrage, ‘it’s a constitutional disgrace’, if the House of Lords asks the House of Commons can you look at this again, which is basically the only power we have.”

Diane Abbott, who voted with Corbyn’s three-line whip to back the Brexit bill on Wednesday night despite representing a strongly pro-remain seat, has said Labour fears a Scotland-style electoral meltdown in the north of England if it fails to back Brexit.



Abbott, the shadow home secretary, says some polling suggested there was a risk that the party’s electoral support could collapse in some of its traditional heartlands if it appeared to be trying to block Brexit, just as voters deserted the party after the 2014 independence referendum in Scotland.

She voted with Corbyn’s three-line whip on the third reading of the Brexit bill on Wednesday having missed the previous vote last week because of a migraine. She said the shadow cabinet had had “intense discussion” in recent days and one of the things that had swayed her was warnings about the electoral consequences of failing to abide by the result of the referendum.

In an article for the Guardian, Abbott wrote: “There were voices within Labour that warned of a Scottish scenario. In Scotland, Labour voters who voted against the Labour line in the independence referendum have yet to return to voting for the Labour party. And there was some polling which seemed to reveal that the same scenario could play out in the north of England in the wake of Brexit.”

Scotland returned 41 Labour MPs to Westminster at the 2010 general election and just one in 2015.

Corbyn has not yet announced a replacement for Dawn Butler, who was shadow minister for diverse communities. He will also have to decide what action to take against more than 10 other frontbenchers who refused to back the bill and three of his whips, the MPs who are meant to impose party discipline.

Corbyn has said he will be “lenient” and repeatedly stressed that he understood the concerns of MPs from remain-leaning areas. But backbenchers say they cannot remember a precedent for whips failing to support the party line and being let off scot-free. Labour sources said there were other forms of discipline that could be used to reprimand MPs, short of sacking them.

Rather than being locked in a room in Westminster plotting the reshuffle, Corbyn spent Thursday touring the constituency of the shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester.

In Lewis’s resignation letter released on Thursday morning but written before Wednesday night’s vote, the MP thanked Corbyn for discussing the issue of Brexit in an “open and comradely way” but he said he could not vote for the Brexit bill as Labour had not succeeded in amending it.

“Our party, the Labour party, was right to attempt, through parliament, to win the protections the people of this country need,” Lewis wrote. “Unfortunately, despite the progress we did make, we have been unable to secure them.”

Further announcements are expected before the weekend, with Jon Trickett, usually regarded as a key Corbyn ally, expected to lose oversight of the party’s election campaigns.

Labour sources insisted Trickett remained a core member of the team and no one would be sacked or demoted, but stripping him of responsibility for election campaigns less than a fortnight before a pair of crucial by-elections, in Stoke-on-Trent and Copeland, would underline the anxiety in Corbyn’s inner circle about the party’s prospects.

Trickett appears to be set to move into the role of shadow communities and local government secretary, a post previously held by Grahame Morris, who is receiving treatment for cancer, and temporarily filled since his illness by Teresa Pearce. When Morris returns, he is expected to slot into the shadow Defra post, Labour sources suggested.

The job of equipping the party for elections looks likely to be shared by close Corbyn ally Ian Lavery, and Andrew Gwynne, who is already closely involved in the Copeland by-election.

Trickett told the Guardian in December he was working 15-hour days to put Labour on an election footing and preparing to put Labour’s half a million members to work in an electoral ground war “on a scale this country hasn’t seen before”, if Theresa May called an early general election.

But with the Tories pouring resources into the by-election battle in Copeland, in Cumbria, and Ukip leader Paul Nuttall standing in Stoke-on-Trent Central, there are concerns about the party’s likely performance – and how that may reflect on Corbyn’s leadership.