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Jack Straw to quit front bench

Michael Crick | 21:39 UK time, Monday, 26 July 2010

I am told on very reliable authority that the Shadow Justice Secretary Jack Straw wll not stand when Labour's new Shadow Cabinet is elected this autumn, once the party has elected a new leader.

Straw is known as one of the great survivors at Westminster, having enjoyed one of the longest front-bench stints in post-war British politics. He is currently the longest continuously serving member of either front bench in the Commons. He was recruited to Michael Foot's team of Opposition spokesmen back in 1980, thirty years ago, only a year after he was first elected an MP.

He joined the Shadow Cabinet in 1987, and has remained in either the Shadow Cabinet or Cabinet ever since. Straw ran the leadership campaigns of both Tony Blair in 1994 and Gordon Brown in 2007.

He has served under seven Labour leaders and acting leaders - Foot, Kinnock, Smith, Beckett, Blair, Brown and Harman. He was at times mooted as a future Labour leader himself, perhaps in a caretaker role.

Also stepping down this autumn will be the Shadow Chancellor Alistair Darling, the only other current member of Labour's Shadow Cabinet to sit in Cabinet throughout the whole of the Blair-Brown years.

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