Brian Charles John Sedgemore (17 March 1937 – 29 April 2015) was a British politician who served as a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 to 1979, and again from 1983 to 2005.

[1][2][3][4][5][better source needed] Brian Sedgemore was born in Exmouth, Devon,[6] and with his two siblings was raised by his mother; his father, a stoker in the Royal Navy, died during active service in the Second World War.

While working as a Whitehall civil servant, he trained at night as a barrister specialising in Criminal Law at Middle Temple, London, being called to the bar in 1966.

During the 1970s he and fellow barrister David Fingleton contributed pseudonymous articles on politics and the police and criminal justice system to the Private Eye column 'Justinian Forthemoney'.

[7] On 6 February 1998, in a controversial speech at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain), he disparaged the 1997 intake of female Labour MPs as "Stepford Wives…who've had the chip inserted into their brain to keep them on message and who collectively put down women and children in the vote on lone parent benefits"[8] — in the previous month benefits had been reduced for this group of (mainly) women.