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John Prescott’s class act was entirely for the elite
The fawning tributes from the Establishment have painted Prescott as a fighter for Old Labour leftism and treated his background and accent as unique eccentricities — two utterly bogus postulations, writes STEVE PARRY
NEW FOR OLD? Labour leader Tony Blair (second right), with (from left) Gordon Brown, deputy leader John Prescott and Robin Cook at the 1995 launch of the ‘New Labour, New Britain’ tour, in which he spent three weeks visiting towns and cities in a bid to convince party doubters that clause four of the party’s constitution must be scrapped

THE tributes have for have been pouring for political heavyweight and man of the people, John Prescott (aka Baron Prescott of Kingston upon Hull), who passed away last week aged 84.

His reputation was of a man singularly able to cut through the usual Westminster crap using the unvarnished spade of mangled syntax and the blunt shovel of malapropisms as his tools.

Homeless seamen were forced to live in “hostiles,” industrial disputes could be sorted through “meditation,” and the New Labour mission was to “go back now, forwards, back to full employment.” Absolute gibberish, of course, but we knew what he was on about, at least most of the time.

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