Gordon Brown to step down as MP and away from frontline politics

Ex Prime Minister will resign at the general election

The former Prime Minister has announced that he will leave Parliament after 32 years at next May’s general election (PA)

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced that he will leave Parliament after 32 years at next May’s general election.

In an emotional farewell speech in his Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency, he said he would be leaving “public office” but would continue his “public service” in his role as the United Nations’ special envoy for global education.

He said he would turn down a seat in the House of Lords and would never return to frontline politics, but he promised to intervene in future to safeguard Britain’s place in the EU, Scotland’s place in the UK, and the NHS. He also pledged to work for Ed Miliband’s election as prime minister next May and to help Labour in the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections.

Mr Brown, who appeared with his wife Sarah and sons John and Fraser, said local people had shown “kindness” and given him “strength” when his daughter Jennifer Jane died after 10 days 13 years ago.

“We are not leaving Fife,” he said. “It is London we are leaving.”

Mr Brown has bowed out on a high, after playing a pivotal role in heading off a Yes vote in the referendum on Scottish independence in September.

He played a critical role, along with Tony Blair, in the New Labour project which made his party electable again in 1997 after 18 years in the wilderness. As the longest-serving chancellor in living memory, his 10 years at the Treasury saw him pump billions into public services and keep Britain out of the euro – a decision that Blairites now admit he got right, and their man wrong.

But his tenure was marred by feuding between Brownites and Blairites. It stemmed from his decision to stand aside to give Mr Blair a free run at the Labour leadership as the modernisers’ candidate when John Smith died in 1994.

His premiership never really recovered from the “non-election” of 2007, which he called off at the last minute, but he regained his authority when he galvanised world leaders during the financial crisis, chairing a “$1 trillion G20 summit” in London.

Lord Mandelson, who fell out with Mr Brown during the Blair-Brown clashes but was unexpectedly recalled to his Cabinet in 2008, said: “He had an uneasy temperament and sometimes saw conspiracies when none existed. Gordon didn’t get everything right but he did get the big things right.”