GORDON Brown, described as a colossus of British politics, has been praised for his contribution to national life as reports suggest he is preparing to call time on his House of Commons career.
The former Prime Minister is widely expected to announce before Christmas that he is stepping down as an MP at the May general election. His announcement will follow that of his erstwhile colleague Alistair Darling, who after his leadership of the Better Together campaign in the independence contest, announced he would be stepping down as an MP at the election.
While there was no official confirmation from Mr Brown's office, it has been speculated for some time the former premier was unlikely to stand again for Westminster given his international charity commitments.
While having a distinguished career for many years, some will regard his greatest political moment to have come in September when in a series of impassioned speeches he helped the No camp to victory.
Some colleagues had wanted the party's big beast to become leader of the Scottish Labour Party after Johann Lamont's resignation but Mr Brown had insisted he was not going to return to frontline domestic politics.
A colleague said: "Gordon has confirmed to friends that he will stand down at the election in May. He wants to go out on a high after effectively salvaging the campaign to keep the UK together in September. He will focus on his charity work."
Since Labour's 2010 election defeat, the ex-PM has devoted much of his time on raising money for international charities and his role as United Nations special envoy for global education.
The 63-year-old politician has been MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, formerly Dunfermline East, since 1983. He lost out on the Labour leadership to Tony Blair following the death of John Smith but served as chancellor for 10 years before succeeding his colleague from 2007 until 2010.
Appearing on the BBC's Sunday Politics Scotland programme, all three candidates for the Scottish Labour leadership wished Mr Brown well.
Frontrunner Jim Murphy said: "If this is his decision, it's entirely for him to make. All three of us would wish him well with whatever he does next."
MSP Sarah Boyack described Mr Brown as a "colossus" of British politics.
Her colleague Neil Findlay said it was no secret he wanted Mr Brown to have put his name forward to lead the Scottish party.
Last night, Mr Brown was unavailable for comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article