Nick Brown MP: 'Disturbing Allegations Of Criminality Of The Most Serious Nature'

In April 2024, Shadow Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, now Home Secretary, made a rather curious statement: “Nick Brown’s case has resolved itself because he has stepped down.” This was strange, because for several years, nobody had any idea what he was supposed to have done. It was apparently something which happened two decades ago.

His lawyers, the infamous Carter-Ruck, issued a strange press release in April 2020 which hinted at the underling problem. Brown had sued the author Tom Bower about his book, "Broken Vows":

Mr Brown brought libel proceedings against Mr Bower and Faber and Faber concerning a reference to him in Mr Bower's book about Mr Blair's decade as Prime Minister, Broken Vows, which suggested that in 1998 the News of the World had accused Mr Brown of having paid rent boys for consensual rough sex.

According to the 2017 case summary, available freely online:

The passage of the book complained of is:

In the ensuing discussion about gays in politics, journalist Matthew Parris declared on BBC TV that Mandelson was gay. Days later, Nick Brown, the new minister of agriculture, was accused by the News of the World of paying £100 to rent boys in order to be kicked around a room, and admitted his sexuality.

Brown was suspended from the Labour party by Keir Starmer in September 2022 over undisclosed allegations. No public resolution or charges ever emerged. Nobody knows why, three years later. At the time, Starmer had demanded Boris Johnson resign over his failure to act over the Chris Pincher sexual misconduct allegations.

After Brown was suspended, a spokesperson for the Labour Party allegedly stated:

The Chief Whip has suspended the Labour whip from Nick Brown pending a further investigation into disturbing allegations of criminality of the most serious nature.

What happened afterwards is utterly bizarre, and the party's members are still furious... three years later.

Who Is Nick Brown?

Nicholas Hugh Brown was born on 13 June 1950 in Hawkhurst, Kent, and educated at Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys and the University of Manchester. Early in his career he worked in advertising (for Procter & Gamble) then moved into the trade union movement, serving as a legal adviser for the Northern Region of the GMB union in Newcastle upon Tyne.

He entered elected politics first as a Labour councillor on Newcastle City Council in 1980. In 1983, after Mike Thomas (the sitting Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne East) defected to the SDP, Brown was selected as Labour candidate and won the seat in the general election of that year, beginning his long tenure in the House of Commons.

During the opposition years under Labour, Brown held a number of frontbench roles: he was Shadow Solicitor General, then in 1988 moved to be frontbench spokesperson on Treasury matters, later Shadow Health, Deputy Leader or Deputy in the Commons, and Deputy Chief Whip. He became well known within the party as someone loyal to Gordon Brown (though the two are not related), backing him in internal leadership contests and serving as his informal campaign manager.

When Labour won the 1997 general election, Brown was appointed Government Chief Whip, a role he held until mid-1998. He then became Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1998 to 2001), during which he had responsibility during crises such as the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak.

During the same time, In 1998, he announced he was a homosexual after a former lover contacted the News of the World offering to sell his story.

After 2001 he served as Minister of State for Work (in the Department for Work and Pensions) until about 2003, after which he left the government.

When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, Nick Brown was appointed Regional Minister for the North East and Deputy Government Chief Whip. In 2008 he returned to the Government Chief Whip role under Gordon Brown, also retaining his regional remit for the North East. He spent that period in government until Labour lost power in 2010.

In opposition after 2010 Brown’s roles shifted: Ed Miliband asked him to stand down as Chief Whip shortly after the 2010 election.

In 2011, he claimed his phone had been bugged.

Under Jeremy Corbyn, Brown was reappointed Chief Whip in 2016. He continued as Opposition Chief Whip under Keir Starmer after Starmer became Labour leader in 2020, though he stepped down from that post in May-2021. During later years he also served as Chair of the Finance Committee of the Commons (from May 2021 to March 2023).

In September 2022 Brown was suspended from the Labour Party under its disciplinary process. In December 2023 he resigned from the Labour Party in protest at what he described as an unresolved disciplinary process, and also announced he would not stand again at the next general election. He ceased being an MP when Parliament was dissolved at the end of May 2024.

Young Friends & Gifts

It's all a bit strange. The original BBC article has the usual suspects leaping to Brown's defence with the typical faux pink outrage. He didn't "pay" a young man for sex. He just gave him money as a "gift of friendship." This was after Welsh Secretary Ron Davies resigned after being caught in a gay cottaging spot where he was mugged.

"These include the allegation that I paid him for sex," he said.

"I deny totally that I paid money for sex. I have never done so."

He added: "As in any other friendship, there were gifts. As I earned more than he did, and as this was a genuine friendship, there were occasions when I gave him small sums of money as gifts of friendship.

"I did not do so regularly. I certainly never did so for sex."

This "genuine friendship," where the age of the "partner" is not given, appears to have involved sodomy; it was serious enough to have extended over year and involved criminal allegations two decades later.

In an off-the-track article for the Independent, Paul Lashmar detailed the background to the affair regarding the "tough, if not ruthless, enforcer for the Government" in a Hollywood story of chronic victimhood. It even includes the disgraced publicist Max Clifford.

The usual route for former lovers and wives who want to sell their "kiss'n'tell" stories of the rich or famous is Max Clifford - the publicist who specialises in getting maximum pay-outs for such stories.

Indeed, Clifford told The Independent that he got a call last April from a "Mr Robinson" who told him he had been having a sexual relationship with a Cabinet Minister. The caller said he was a rent boy and had a sexual affair for over a year. Clifford says: "The man wanted to remain anonymous and was worried about being turned over by the newspaper." Clifford told him that he could say anything, provided he had evidence.

According to sources around Nick Brown, the MP had known for some time that this former partner was prepared to spill the beans. During the election, Brown received calls from the man which Brown suspected were attempts to trick him into making admissions that were being tape recorded. Whether the News of the World was involved at this stage, is unclear.

This is a familiar story for any London journalist who knows about the circles of "young men who can be trusted." In general terms, the paper typically offers 30,000; the guilty party is contacted so they can up the offer to 50,000.

Tony Blair details Brown's "rent boy" incident in the "We govern in prose" chapter of his biography, explaining Alistair Campbell engineered the spin so it emerged as a heroic "coming out" story.

“Alistair [Campbell] heroically pursuaded them to run it with Nick coming out as a gay man. The result was that the story turned from a sordid scandal into an honest confession and Nick was saved.”

The Sun & Superinjunctions

A superinjunction is a perverse feature of the UK judicial system which allows a judge to not merely injunct the press from reporting a story, but to prevent them from revealing the existence of the gagging order itself.

In April 2024, Sun columnist Harry Cole hinted this mechanism was in place for a story concerning Nick Brown which was so appalling it would cause "outcry":

Desperate to talk about anything other than Angela Rayner, Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer was quick off the mark to ask why it took Conservative HQ “so long to act and whether they’ve reported this to the police, who it seems to me should be involved”.

Which is some astonishing brass neck given how the party handled the disturbing allegations of criminality made about their former Chief Whip Nick Brown two years ago.

Legal reasons prevent me from sharing the details yet, but they are of the most serious nature and there would be genuine public outcry were they to ever see the light of day.

Cole was referencing his own story, which highlighted the fact Labour knew of extremely serious criminal allegations, but did not contact the police.

LABOUR were made aware of multiple allegations of criminality against former Chief Whip Nick Brown but did not alert the police. The veteran Newcastle MP was suspended from Labour in 2022 over allegations that were never made public.

But The Sun understands Labour made no contact with police despite the serious nature of the complaints. Asked if she was confident the party had done all they should have done in regard to Mr Brown, she insisted: “Absolutely.” She added it is for complainants to decide “if they wish to go to the police”.

Mr Brown still receives a tax-payer funded salary of £86,584.

England's Strangest Resignation

In December 2023, Brown again bizarrely turned to libel lawyers Carter-Ruck to issue a forthright denial, and resign. His statement indicates the allegations of sexual criminality were historical, and appear to be from around the same time in 1998.

Brown's side of it was a political rival cooked it all up.

My suspension followed a complaint against me by a political rival within the Party. It concerned an allegation about events said to have taken place more than 25 years ago.

To be clear; the accusations against me were, and remain, entirely false, without even the faintest germ of any truth to them. Not only had they never previously been made in the ensuing 25 years, they had never been so much as hinted at, whether by that individual or anyone else. They came entirely out of the blue, and as a complete bombshell to me.

The person who made the accusations was a long-standing political opponent of mine (who at the time of the complaint clearly had political ambitions of their own) and I can only conclude that their decision to fabricate these allegations – hiding behind the safe cloak of a confidential process – was made with those ambitions in mind.

Aside from a wholly fabricated statement by the complainant made for the first time almost 25 years after the (fabricated) events are said to have taken place, the “case” against me relies largely on so-called “evidence” consisting of statements by a small number of individuals (friendly to the complainant) who admit that they knew nothing whatsoever of the allegation until the complainant chose to mention it to them more than twenty years later.

It's not clear why these events were a "bombshell" given he was required to explain them to Tony Blair personally, or who this mysterious rival was.

Nor is it clear why Sun journalists have reported they are under legal restrictions but the details are so appalling they'd cause outcry. Or why the Labour party took them seriously enough for over a year if they were so clearly false, but didn't contact the police.

But most of all, it's deeply unclear why Brown would need libel lawyers for a party disciplinary procedure which was patently false, or why the Home Secretary considers criminal allegations to be closed due to his resignation.

Rumours circulated widely on social media repeatedly speculate the incident involved questions over the person's age, and potential long-term intestinal injuries he may still suffer with. There does not seem to be any evidence for this claim, but it is persistent among commentators due to the party's silence.

Questions have also arisen over the nature of his relationship with the Mariinsky Theatre Trust and his frequent travel to St Petersburg supporting its work as a non-executive director.

The Politics Blog astutely notes:

And it’s not just Brown. Anyone from Labour HQ want to shed light on why Conor McGinn, former MP for St Helens North, also mysteriously disappeared under suspension? Or is this another case of “nothing to see here, folks, move along”?

What Does The Evidence Indicate?

It's important to stress the English tradition of presumption of innocence: Brown is innocent until convicted by a jury of his peers after being charged with an offence. Conversely, the lack of transparency in this case fuels suspicion of a cover-up.

What we can surmise so far:

• Brown was in some form of sodomitical partnership in the late 90s with what his own party (and Prime Minister) believed to be a "rent boy."
• This behaviour continued for more than a year and involved financial "support."
• The complainant went to the tabloids in 1998 and was promised anonymity in exchange for evidence.
• Brown was tipped off by attempts to record phone calls where he believed he was being entrapped.
• The complainant went to ground.
• The News of the World published anyway, and Brown alleges his phone was tapped.
• Blair's government machine span the story as a gay "coming out" victimhood tale.
• Brown sued author Tom Bowers in 2017 for repeating the 1998 story, resulting in a small change of the text.
• It appears the same complainant reappeared in 2022 – 25 years later – and was supported by 3 Labour members in their allegations who demanded an investigation.
• Keir Starmer suspended Brown from his position on full pay, where he was prevented from serving in the House of Commons.
• The Labour party investigation into "criminality" did not involve the police and was left unresolved.
• At the end of 2023, Brown tendered his resignation and stood down as an MP.
• Shabana Mahmood declared the case closed.
• Tabloid reporters aiming to report on it experienced a legal blockade.

Brown's relationship to this person is plain. What is more difficult to establish is whether the complainant was/is acting in good faith or bad. Brown alleges the motive was financial and nefarious. He has strongly resisted accusations of violence towards the person, rather than sexual contact with him.

It is also clear Starmer acted on the complaint, but the party was disastrous in its handling of it right before and around an election where the story would have been deeply damaging – providing an obvious motive for a cover-up.

The reporting, however, is odd. The complainant wanted anonymity rather than fame, and going to ground (without payment, according to the NOTW) suggests he may have been intimidated to report his story any further.

The party has not disclosed the complaints which were submitted by these three Labour members on his behalf, twenty-five years later. Nor have the police been involved, or the story been investigated any further.

It is likely these were leaked.

It is also likely legal proceedings were engaged to prevent these leaks from being published.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. All an MP – Labour or otherwise – need to is read them in the in the Labour-run House of Commons under parliamentary privilege to circumvent legal liability to instigate a police and medical investigation under Operation Hydrant.

It seems Superinjunction Starmer didn't have to worry about reporters printing them during his election cycle or first year.

It all just... went away.