Newcastle MP Nick Brown to stand down

Nick Brown has served under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Jeremy Corbyn and Sir Keir Starmer

Long-serving Newcastle MP and former cabinet minister Nick Brown is quitting the Labour Party and will stand down at the next election.

Mr Brown, who represents Newcastle East, had the party whip suspended last September after a complaint was made against him.

He has strongly denied any wrongdoing but said his lawyers had advised him to withdraw from the disciplinary process and quit the party, believing he may not get a fair hearing.

The Labour Party said it "treats all complaints with the utmost seriousness".

A spokesperson said: "The Labour Party has established an independent complaints process that ensures complaints are decided impartially and fairly.”

Mr Brown has continued to sit as an independent MP while the party's investigation has been carried out. 

The 73-year-old, who served in the cabinets of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and as chief whip for Jeremy Corbyn and Sir Keir Starmer, said he was leaving with a “heavy heart” but felt he had no choice.

'Inexcusably flawed'

In a statement from his lawyers, Carter Ruck, Mr Brown said: "My decision to stand down is made against the backdrop of a long-running internal Labour Party disciplinary process against me - a process which I consider (and am advised) is so fundamentally, and inexcusably, flawed that I can no longer engage with it.

"It is with an extremely heavy heart that, as well as announcing that I will not be standing for re-election, I have also today made the difficult decision to resign from my membership of the party which I love, and of which I have been a proud member for over 50 years."

Mr Brown, who has been MP for Newcastle East since 1983, said his decision not to stand for parliament again was one he had been considering for some time due to his age, and because of boundary changes.

But he said his resignation from the party was entirely down to an internal Labour disciplinary process he called "grotesquely unfit for purpose, and open to flagrant abuse".

Mr Brown has been MP for Newcastle East since 1983

Mr Brown said the complaint against him, which has never been made public, dated to 25 years ago, and was made by a political rival within the party.

He said the complaint came as a "bombshell" and insisted it was fabricated, but revealed no details.

The MP said he was prepared to co-operate with the investigation and disciplinary process, but "it became clear to me, and to my legal team, that I can simply have no faith whatsoever in the ability (or, I fear, the desire) of the Labour Party to investigate and then adjudicate on this allegation fairly and even-handedly".

He said: "Things have reached a very sorry pass when the likely next party of government conducts cases of this gravity in a manner more akin to those of a mismanaged golf club."

He told the BBC that he remained Labour "to his core" and was filled with huge sadness at the decision.

It is a measure of Mr Brown's anger that he is prepared to level the harshest possible criticism at Labour’s complaints process.

The allegations against him will now never be proved or disproved, and we may never know their precise detail, but he is not the only person within the party to be concerned by a disciplinary procedure that can take so long, and appear so opaque.

His work as chief whip was respected and admired within the party and even among Conservatives.

It is why four Labour leaders trusted to him to enforce parliamentary discipline, making it a rather cruel irony that he is calling time on his 50-year membership because of its complaints process.