PETER KILFOYLE announced last night that he will quit Parliament at the looming election, declaring it was time to be “watching the wheels go round”.

The Walton MP brought down the curtain on a colourful – and controversial – 19-year Westminster career, telling his party members that everyone reached a point where they needed to “step aside”.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Post, Mr Kilfoyle revealed he planned to fly to Australia, to trace the history of a distant cousin – Tom Kilfoyle – who founded a cattle station deep in the Outback.

Otherwise, the 63-year-old left-winger declined to discuss his plans for the future and gave few clues to his reasons for following Wavertree MP Jane Kennedy, and scores of others, out of Parliament.

Those include Labour colleagues Claire Curtis-Thomas in Crosby, Eddie O’Hara in Knowsley South, Ben Chapman and Stephen Hesford in Wirral South and West, and almost certainly Bob Wareing in West Derby, after his de-selection by Labour.

In a letter that party members will receive today, Mr Kilfoyle wrote: “I have been considering my position for some time and have come to the conclusion that it is time for me to go.

“Did I succeed? Only you know that – and, even then, how do you measure success in politics? Much of political life is an illusion, to both the participant and the observer.

“There comes a time, if one is sensible, to step aside and spend some time watching the wheels go round. That time has come for me.”

The words are a nod to John Lennon and his hit single, Watching The Wheels, from someone who played at The Cavern Club as a Merseybeat fan in the 1960s.

The decision is a major surprise, given that just last month Mr Kilfoyle hit back angrily at Liverpool Labour leader Joe Anderson’s suggestion that some people thought he was “past his sell-by date”.

That clash, which followed the Walton MP’s attack on youthful Wavertree candidate Luciana Berger as a “student politician”, was just the latest of countless controversies dating back two decades and more.

In recent years, Mr Kilfoyle has called for the toppling of the American owners of Liverpool Football Club, attacked the city-region as toothless and accused Cherie Blair of inventing a poverty-stricken childhood in the city.

Before that, he was investigated over a possible breach of the Official Secrets Act, after admitting passing on secret details of George Bush’s alleged threat to bomb al-Jazeera TV station.

And he fought an eight-year battle for an inquiry into how Liverpool’s most notorious gangsters, John Haase and Paul Bennett, were let out of jail. The pair are now back behind bars.