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Labour veteran Tony Benn was last night fighting for his life after spending a fourth night in hospital.

The 88-year-old former Cabinet minister is understood to be ­seriously ill after being admitted at the weekend feeling unwell.

A family spokesman last night said: "Tony Benn was taken to hospital on Saturday evening after feeling unwell.

"He is currently receiving treatment."

Just last year Mr Benn revealed he did not fear his demise after suffering a stroke, explaining that losing his wife Caroline to cancer 14 years ago had helped him cope with the prospect. He said: "I'm not ­frightened about death.

"I don't know why, but I just feel at a certain moment your switch is switched off and that's it. And you can't do anything about it.

"I think experiencing my wife's life and then death has encouraged me to feel like this."

But he admitted that he still misses the American educationalist and wanted to be buried next to her by the River Blackwater in Essex.

Mr Benn entered Parliament in November 1950 and served as Minister of Technology, Industry and Energy in the Wilson and Callaghan Cabinets.

He opposed joining the Common Market, was pipped to the Deputy Leadership by Dennis Healey and backed the Miners' Strike.

Mr Benn finally stood down from Parliament in 2001 to "spend more time on politics".

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In recent years he has been president of the Stop the War campaign.

His son, Hilary, is Shadow Communities Secretary and his granddaughter Emily Benn stood unsuccessfully for the Labour Party in 2010.

His father, William Wedgwood Benn, was a Liberal MP, a Labour Minister and later made a peer.

On William's death in 1960 Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as he was then, became the 2nd Viscount Stansgate.

But his elevation to the House of Lords prevented him from sitting as an MP.

Mr Benn won the ­by-election he triggered but was barred from taking his seat.

His battle led to the Peerage Act 1963, which allowed the renunciation of peerages.

No stranger to serious ill-health, he was given three years to live in 1990 after being ­diagnosed with leukaemia.

He wrote about death in the last volume of his diaries, A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine, released last year.

He said: "I had an extraordinary dream that this was the time to die, here and now, and I lay wondering if I was going to die, and how long it would be before my body was discovered."

In 2007, he wrote: "I feel totally out of sympathy with the Labour Party on civil liberties, on the war, on Europe, and perhaps the only answer is to die, which is an extreme thing to say, but I don't know how I'm going to cope."