I like rediscovering remarkable things. More often than not, this happens with songs that have been buried at the bottom of my Spotify library since the Jurassic age. Each one unlocks a memory and, whether happy or sad, it is tremendously powerful. This is the sensation I felt when I heard John Prescott had died aged 86.
Naturally, we haven’t heard Prescott’s name since at least 2010 when Labour crashed out of Number 10. But the former Deputy Prime Minister had a seismic effect on British politics – a profound legacy that continues to reverberate across the British and world scenes. But don’t get too excited. This isn’t your typical fluffy obituary that pretends Prescott’s political career was all lollipops and candy lanes. Because it most certainly was not.
Prescott championed some exceedingly daft ideas. Most famously, he somehow concluded that taking out one lane of the M4 to become a bus lane and reducing the speed limit would reduce traffic flow and shorten journey times. This was just complete madness. If people are funnelling into a football stadium through four doors, and you close one, surely it doesn’t take a genius to work out that queues will be slower and longer.
This backwards decision was made even more confusing when the same Labour government decided to widen the M25 to reduce congestion. But we shouldn’t be surprised by Prescott’s perplexing approach to British transport. We know he wasn’t a car man because he had at least eleven Jaguars – undoubtedly because the last one broke down.
As Deputy Prime Minister, Prescott voted with the Labour government to support Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. This turned out to be disastrous, as Blair’s search for alleged weapons of mass destruction drew a blank. After rising to power as an antidote to a lack of public trust in politicians, this ultimately killed off New Labour’s blooming rose – condemning it to over a decade in opposition.
Despite all that, however, Prescott’s most unsuccessful legacy of all is the path he paved for Angela Rayner, now Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Rayner is the epitome of Starmerism’s hypocritical rule. From calling out Boris Johnson for redecorating his flat, only for Starmer to indulge in lavish luxury himself, to a quite frankly ridiculous plan to carpet bomb Britain with an unprecedented 300,000 houses per year, Rayner is as clueless as the rest of Starmer’s creaking Cabinet.
I happen to find it incredulous that Rayner is compared to John Prescott – because she isn’t a scratch on him.
For all these daft decisions, Prescott was a political titan who had a very natural and very human public face. Prescott stepped unarmed into a pit of lions when he appeared on Top Gear in 2011. After talking-down cars and clogging up the M4 with poxy buses, the last TV programme you’d think of appearing on is the world’s biggest motoring show.
But Prescott was a natural public speaker. He entered the Top Gear studio to ringing boos and hisses – and ended up earning raucous laughter from perhaps the most unlikely audience on John Prescott’s planet. It takes great skill and warmth to win over your opponents. That, really, is the secret to being a successful politician. Which is why Angela Rayner will never come close to Prescott until she stops rubbing people up the wrong way.
Prescott packed a punch – but he knew how to do it admirably. In one of the most famous incidents in British politics this century, Prescott punched a farmer in the face after he had thrown an egg at the Deputy Prime Minister. Whilst such behaviour should unquestionably be discouraged, Prescott became known as the politician who ‘pulled no punches’, later revealing he had explained to Tony Blair he was just fulfilling the government’s mission of ‘connecting with the electorate’.
Prescott was a master of spinning bad press into good press by using humour – a seldom traced art that has largely vanished from British politics. You don’t see Keir Starmer going around punching farmers who call him many rude names. He just taxes their farm away instead. I wonder whether Prescott would’ve landed a punch on Starmer’s nose if he had the chance.
These are all just some of the reasons why I truly am sad that British politics has lost one of its greats. It is no secret that I am deeply dissatisfied with many of Labour’s policies and actions, both now and in the past. But I can still appreciate a political giant when I see one – no matter their political colours. It’s simply a shame that those on the left have ended up with a bespectacled, unprincipled political worm.
Prescott openly and proudly came from a working-class background in Wales, and it always felt that was never lost in the pompous grandiosity of Westminster. There is much to be admired about a politician who is true to their roots – and that is Prescott summed up. No fake personalities. No sickly-sweet Mr Nice Guy. Just John.
Image: Flickr/Andrew Skudder
No image changes made.
Comments