There was a time we all looked forward to on the BBC Today programme, back in the early years of Tony Blair’s first term as Prime Minister. Late July, early August. Blair had scooted off to San Gimignano, Mandelson was probably on a yacht with an oligarch, even Campbell was away battling his weird inner demons somewhere. And for about three or four weeks the country was run by John Prescott, as deputy PM.
As you are aware, there is a dearth of political stories in the dog days of summer. But with John in charge, all you had to do was ring up and suggest that a Labour Spad had said something nonsensical and bingo! Prezza would light up like Bonfire Night, growling about ‘the bloody teenyboppers’, as he referred to all Labour researchers regardless of their age, and come on to the Today programme and release himself of a great deal of bile. He was very quick to temper, as you will recall from his famous punch. But he was also one of the few genuinely working-class front benchers in that administration and he was marvellously incapable of dissembling. I liked him enormously. But he was also used by that government, much as Rayner (not his match by a long way) is being used now.
John had been in the Campaign group of Labour MPs, back when the party had a kind of three way (four way, if you count Militant) ideological split. There was the Manifesto group, which represented the right wing, the Tribune group (Kinnock et al) which represented the centre left. And then the Campaign group – Benn, Meacher, McDonnell and of course Prescott – the far left. And so John was, for a long while, Tony Blair’s fig leaf, hauled out when the going got tough to bully the left into quiescence.
I think he enjoyed the trappings of office, as any working-class bloke made good would, but not the nature of his role. In the end his pugnacious left-wing zeal diminished to almost nothing and he was left as a kind of pantomime turn. He deserved far better than that. His time in ascendancy came just as Labour decided to tip its cap to the mewling, identity obsessed, middle class. I think that like the excellent David Blunkett – and perhaps Alan Johnson – he was not happy with what Labour had become. Rest in peace John, if you can.
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