Ken Livingstone has just told the Today programme that he doesn’t think Corbyn ever planned to reshuffle Hilary Benn, instead blaming the media for whipping up speculation that he was about to be demoted. Ken says Benn has “stopped being quite so dissident and critical”.

Yet just yesterday, a senior Labour figure with apparent insight into Team Corbyn’s thinking told Wato:

“Allowing genuine debate is one thing but all we had was days of press coverage about splits between Jeremy Corbyn and Hilary Benn. I think that’s counter-productive so it might very well be the case… that it would be better to move Hilary Benn to something where he’s in agreement with Jeremy Corbyn rather than where he’s in disagreement.” 

The senior Labour figure who said this? Ken Livingstone. So either Ken is out of the loop or Jez bottled it…