INTERNATIONAL opera singer Suzannah Clarke has quit the music industry and has been accepted as a potential Labour candidate.

Ms Clarke said last night that she would like to stand for the Bishop Auckland seat, which will be vacated at the next election by Derek Foster.

"I want to find a constituency that wants to put its faith in me," she said at the Labour Party spring conference, in the Sage, Gateshead.

"Somewhere like Bishop Auckland would be very good, although anywhere in the North-East would be very comfortable - I know the culture, appreciate the people and have lived here all my life."

Ms Clarke, 33, who was born in Normanby into a steel-working family, said she had turned down a lucrative contract to tour Asia in the lead role in the opera La Fille du Rgiment to concentrate on politics.

She was approved as a candidate by the party last week.

"I have made an absolute decision," she said. "I won't stop my voluntary work or doing the odd concert, but politics is to come first and foremost. My constituents have to be the main centre of my life, and opera has to go backwards."

Ms Clarke, who has been a member of the Labour Party for 12 years and whose mother, Sheelagh, is a Redcar and Cleveland district councillor, said she had been inspired to switch from singing to vote-winning by her high-profile role in the unsuccessful Yes for the North-East campaign during last year's referendum on a directly-elected regional assembly.

She said: "There was a void in my life after the campaign, which I felt passionately about, and I suddenly realised I couldn't step back from it.

"I've been all over the world with opera, lived three lives in one, but now I need a new challenge."

Ms Clarke said that even if she did not find a seat in time for the forthcoming General Election, which is expected on May 5, she wouldn't be returning to the stage.

"I don't switch to and fro," she said.

"I will be looking for a by-election, fighting seats that aren't winnable, and I'll go off and do a lot of in-depth study."