At first Corbyn chose to suffer this paradox. He may have thought he was too weak to end it, he may have hoped it would pass. But it couldn’t last. So Corbyn decided to do the one thing that is the prerogative of the leader of the Labour Party: bring the cabinet into line. That was his right. In fact, it was a necessity given the degree of rebellion afoot. Everyone is now complaining that Pat McFadden was unfairly sacked as shadow European minister just because he asked David Cameron if it was right to say that the West brought terrorism upon itself. But that’s not really what McFadden was doing when he posed that question: he was implying that Jeremy Corbyn thinks the West is morally culpable and he was inviting a Tory Prime Minister to denounce him for it. So McFadden got the can and some other shadow ministers quit in a blaze of publicity that meant their names will be half-remembered forever.