Politicians of all stripes have lined up to pay tribute to John Prescott, the former British deputy prime minister and stalwart of the New Labour movement, who has died aged 86.
Prescott, who had Alzheimer’s, died peacefully in a care home on Thursday morning, according to a statement from his family. He served as deputy prime minister for more than a decade under Tony Blair and played a pivotal role in his government.
Blair said Prescott had been “one of the most talented people I ever encountered in politics, one of the most committed and loyal, and definitely the most unusual … There were no rules he really abided by”.
During his time in office, Prescott was seen as a custodian of traditional Labour values in the face of a modernising leadership. He acted as a mediator in the often tumultuous relationship between Blair and Brown, which led to him being described as their “marriage counsellor”.
The son of a railway signalman who left school at 15 to work as a trainee chef and then as a steward on the Cunard Line, Prescott is held up to this day as someone who rose from humble beginnings to reach the top of British politics.
Between 1997 and 2001, he served as secretary of state for the environment, transport and the regions, and became Britain’s lead negotiator for the Kyoto protocol, the first international treaty to set legally binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions.
In government he earned the nickname Two Jags for making use of two Jaguar cars – his own and the ministerial one. When in 1999 he faced criticism for using his ministerial Jag for a 200-yard journey to his hotel at Labour conference, he claimed it was so his wife Pauline’s hair would not get blown about.
Known for being straight-talking and at times short-tempered, Prescott punched a protester who threw an egg at him during an election campaign visit in north Wales in 2001. At a press conference the next day, Blair’s response to reporters was simply that “John is John”. The incident inspired a tweak to his nickname: Two Jabs.
The protester, Craig Evans, who now lives on a remote farm outside Denbigh in north Wales, said he had “no regrets” about throwing the egg and that his thoughts were with the late politician’s loved ones.
In an interview with the Guardian in 2019, Prescott said: “When I do die, after 50 years in politics, all they will show on the news is 60 seconds of me thumping a fellow in Wales.”
There were instances of heroism too. In 2004, a canoeist told of how he was rescued by Prescott after being knocked over by a raft while tackling a mountain river in Eryri (Snowdonia). The canoeist was hauled out of the river by Prescott, who was himself planning a white-water trip, after being dragged underwater when his craft capsized.
Towards the end of the New Labour years, media attention became increasingly concentrated on Prescott’s private life. In 2006 he admitted to an affair with his former diary secretary Tracey Temple, triggering a flurry of lurid stories.
In a cabinet reshuffle later that year, Prescott lost his secretary of state role, though he remained deputy prime minister. Not long after he felt compelled to give up his grace-and-favour country pile, Dorneywood, after being pictured on the lawn playing croquet with his staff – for which he was mocked for being at odds with his working-class image.
After standing down as an MP, Prescott wrote an autobiography and won praise for opening up about his 20-year battle with bulimia, which he believed had been brought on by the stress of life in politics.
He was ennobled in 2010 and introduced to the upper chamber as Lord Prescott of Kingston upon Hull, having served for four decades as an MP for the city. He ceased to be a member of the Lords in July after developing health difficulties.
Blair said in a tribute: “There was nothing about John which fitted conventional wisdom. He was from proud traditional working-class stock yet understood instinctively and completely the aspirations of that class and their desire to better themselves.
“He could talk in the bluntest and sometimes bluest language, but it concealed a first-rate intellect, which meant he thought as deeply about issues as much as he cared about them. It is no exaggeration to say the Labour party could never have won three consecutive full terms without John. He was a commanding presence.”
Brown described Prescott as a “titan” and a “gentleman” and said that “despite an outwardly deceptive image of uncompromising toughness, he was generous, believing in the good in everyone”.
“John Lennon said the working-class hero is a difficult thing to be, but I think John would be just fine with being remembered that way,” he said. “He wanted the good things in life for everyone and not just himself. And he showed that Britain can be a country where if you work hard you can fulfil your potential.”
Former colleagues and political adversaries of Prescott’s lined up to describe their favourite encounters with him. William Hague, the former Conservative leader, said Prescott was a “formidable debater” who proved a more challenging adversary at prime minister’s questions than Blair was.
Blair told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that his former deputy “had this extraordinary instinctive sense that something was afoot. He often used to come in unannounced into my room in Downing Street and he would say to me: ‘I know you’re up to something, I don’t know quite what it is, but I know you’re up to something.’ And I would be sort of protesting and saying: ‘No, John, you’ve got it all wrong’ … and of course he would always be right.”
Peter Mandelson, another architect of the New Labour movement, revealed he had worked for Prescott in his 20s and that Prescott later became his referee when he applied to become the Labour party’s campaign and communications director.
“What he said to me at the time was: ‘Peter I’ll do this for you. You’ll do a job. Well, you’ll do a reasonable job; you might as well do it. You’ve got to keep your nose out of politics,’” Mandelson told Sky News. “I said: ‘John, I’m wanting to be the campaign director of the Labour party.’ He said: ‘You know what I mean. You keep your nose out of politics and stop stirring things up. Just do a job and then that will be fine.’”
Al Gore, the former US vice-president who worked with Prescott on the Kyoto protocol in 1997, said that connecting with people was “second nature to him” and that “he fought like hell to negotiate the Kyoto protocol and was an unwavering champion of climate action for decades to come”.
King Charles said he remembered the former deputy prime minister with “great fondness – his unique and indomitable character, as well as his infectious sense of humour”.
In their statement announcing his death, Prescott’s wife, Pauline, and sons, Jonathan and David, said he had died “surrounded by the love of his family and the jazz music of Marian Montgomery”.
