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Brian Sedgemore: Maverick, plain-speaking Labour politician who loved to kick up a fuss, as much for his own Party as for its rivals

Ministers and officials learnt it wasn't a good idea to entrust Sedgemore with their secrets, while journalists learnt he was a rich source of gossip and leaks

Wednesday 06 May 2015 23:58 BST
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Sedgemore (right) in 2005 with the then Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, following his defection from Labour
Sedgemore (right) in 2005 with the then Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, following his defection from Labour

Brian Sedgemore, who has died at the age of 78, was the sort of MP who was valued more by political journalists and others curious about how government and Parliament works than by his own party. To the party whips, whose job was to induce him to conform to the party line, he was a nightmare. Soon after Labour won the 1997 election he was hauled in front of the Chief Whip to be told off for writing an offensive letter about the "arm-twisters and goolie-crushers in the Whips' Office".

Naturally, Tony Blair never considered him for a ministerial job. The only time during his 27 years as an MP that he held any government position was for 22 months in 1977-78, when he gave the impression that he had entered it for the sheer joy of making trouble from the inside.

His 35 years as a Labour Party member ended abruptly a few months before the 2005 general election. Having already decided to quit the Commons at the election, he announced that he was defecting to the Liberal Democrats. His stated reason was opposition to the Iraq War, though part of his motivation seemed also to be his contempt for Tony Blair, whom he had known as a young party member in north London in the late 1970s. In a book published in 1995, Insider's Guide to Parliament, Sedgemoor described the newly elected Labour leader as an "eminently forgettable barrister" who "hijacked a political party in pursuit of personal power."

Born in Exmouth in 1937, Sedgemore barely knew his father, Charles Sedgemore, a fisherman who was a stoker aboard the HMS Rawalpindi, one of 238 men drowned when the ship was sunk by a German warship in November 1939. He went to Hele's, a boys' grammar school in Devon, and Oxford University, then worked as a civil servant for four years until he qualified as a barrister in 1966. He joined the Labour Party in 1970, became a councillor in Wandsworth and started looking for a parliamentary seat.

His love of mischief inspired him to become a columnist for Private Eye, writing about the law under the pseudonym "Justinian Forthemoney". He was asked to leave his chambers when it was suspected that he was leaking information to the satirical magazine; that set a template for his political career. Ministers and officials learnt that it was not a good idea to entrust him with their secrets, while journalists learnt that he was a rich source of gossip and leaks.

He was elected MP for Luton West in February 1974, and in January 1977 took up a post as unpaid Parliamentary Private Secretary to the left-wing Cabinet minister, Tony Benn, having defied an instruction from Jim Callaghan to sign a written pledge that he would not cause trouble. He used his position to embarrass the government repeatedly, and advance the cause of the Bennite left, until he was sacked on Callaghan's orders in November 1978. He later said that his only reason for entering the government was to obtain information that he could leak.

He lost his seat in 1979 and returned as MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch in 1983. Ignoring the convention that a newly elected or re-elected MP should make an uncontroversial maiden speech, he set the tone for the next 22 years by proclaiming that Margaret Thatcher "would not recognise the truth if you were to spray it on her eyeballs."

His main role as a back-bench MP was as a long-serving member of the Commons Treasury Committee, where his wit, legal training, civil service experience and love of mischief made him the scourge of successive chancellors of the exchequer, beginning with Nigel Lawson, whom he once described as a "snivelling little git." Later, he attacked what he called Gordon Brown's "social engineering."

He was a relentless examiner of monetary policy, and a merciless cross–examiner. In 2000, the Bank of England's Governor, Sir Edit George, appealed to the Treasury Select committee to persuade Sedgemoor to curb his language, warning that it was going to become difficult to recruit members to the Monetary Policy Committee if they had to put up with the sort of "personal abuse" that he dealt out.

The following year, to his intense disappointment, he lost his place on the Treasury Select Committee. This left him without a major role in Parliament.

He had also parted company politically with old allies on the hard left, having become a strong supporter of membership of the EU and a scathing opponent of Ken Livingstone's successful bid to be Mayor of London, but he was not forgiven by the mainstream of the party for his past record. His final act as an MP was to appear on stage at a Liberal Democrat conference and urge voters to give Tony Blair a "bloody nose" at the 2005 election.

He died after a fall in London's University College Hospital, where he had been admitted for a kidney operation.

ANDY McSMITH

Brian Charles John Sedgemore, politician and barrister: born Exmouth 17 March 1937; married 1964 Mary Audrey Reece (marriage dissolved, remarried 2002; one son); died London, death announced 5 May 2015.

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