Frank Field has been a huge figure in national politics for the last 40 years.

Although he fought a strong, passionate campaign as the Birkenhead Social Justice Party candidate in this General Election, he was always up against the might of the Labour machine.

In the end, he lost by more than 17,000 votes, bringing to an end his 40-year career as an MP.

But that did not hurt his pride.

Afterwards he said it was an honour to serve Birkenhead and he will keep fighting for the causes he believes in.

A maverick, a free thinker and passionate campaigner, Mr Field has rarely had a quiet moment in politics.

Praised for his tireless work on poverty and standing up for disabled people hit by benefit reforms, Mr Field has been equally derided for writing columns for The Sun newspaper and voting for both Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.

Even before he became an MP, Mr Field was eager to address the causes of poverty.

In 1969, he became the director of the Child Poverty Action Group and led the Low Pay Unit from 1974-1980.

His political career began in 1979, when he was selected for the safe Labour seat of Birkenhead.

Mr Field held the seat with a majority of 5,909 and has been the town’s MP ever since.

But his time in politics was rocky from the start.

Appointed as Labour leader Michael Foot’s education spokesperson in 1980, he was dropped from the post just a year later.

It was during this time that he faced the greatest battle of his emerging political career.

He was perceived to be on the right of the party, totally anathema to the cause of Militant, a far-left group powerful within the Labour Party at the time.

So Militant strove to deselect Mr Field, but after a long battle he fought them off.

Mr Field’s career was to recover under the leadership of Neil Kinnock, where he was given briefs in health in 1983 and social services in 1987.

But the next time he was thrust into the national spotlight was in 1997, when after 18 years in the wilderness Labour were back in power under the leadership of Tony Blair.

He was made minister for welfare reform thanks to his unorthodox approach to poverty reduction and his emphasis on making work pay – his brief was to “think the unthinkable”.

However, Mr Field disliked means-testing and wanted people to join social insurance schemes before they were entitled to most kinds of welfare benefits.

This put him at odds with the chancellor Gordon Brown and saw him sacked, although many say it was a spectacular falling out with his departmental boss Harriet Harman that sealed his fate.

Mr Field continued to campaign for his alternative policies from the backbenches.

In 2006, he was the first senior Labour MP to express concerns about mass immigration, following Tony Blair’s decision not to impose controls on migration from Poland and seven other new EU members.

After the fall of New Labour in 2010, Frank Field displayed his ability to work across party lines, becoming Tory Prime Minister David Cameron’s poverty tsar in 2010.

He put together a report urging the government to focus on the life chances of children under five. For Mr Field that was the key to addressing inequality later in life.

Moving forward to 2016, Frank Field attracted great controversy by joining a small band of Labour MPs who campaigned to leave the EU.

After Leave won, Mr Field angered the party as a whole and local members in particular by voting for Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.

This put Mr Field at threat of deselection and heralded his explosive exit from the Labour Party.

He cited anti-semitism and a “culture of intolerance, nastiness and intimidation”, as his reasons for leaving.

This did not end his impact as an MP. In October, he displayed shocking images of a man with bones ‘coming out of his flesh’ denied disability benefits.

But leaving Labour did end Frank Field’s career as an MP.

Before the count was declared, he was already planning a community event in his now former constituency.

Mr Field used what might be his final moments in the spotlight to criticise the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, he said: “Anyone of those shadow cabinet [members] would have put forward a programme that Attlee and other Labour Prime Ministers would have been proud of and won.

“Boris Johnson holds the key to number 10 courtesy of Jeremy Corbyn.”

He added that Momentum should form their own party.