Born May 31st, 1938
Died November 20th, 2024
John Prescott, who rose through Britain’s trade union movement to become one of the country’s best-known politicians, serving as deputy prime minister for a decade, has died aged 86.
Plain-speaking and proudly working class, Prescott was a visible link to Labour’s traditional origins when the party came to power in 1997 under the modernising leadership of Tony Blair.
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In government, Prescott championed environmental causes – playing a key role in international climate negotiations – and worked to shift power from London to the English regions.
More important for Labour, he helped defuse internal tensions between Blair and his chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, a rival who would become Blair’s successor. At the time, Prescott was jokingly referred to as the political equivalent of a marriage guidance counsellor.
In an age when politics became increasingly managed by media advisers known as spindoctors, Prescott stood out as an authentic, if unorthodox, communicator. He sometimes mangled his sentences, a result of his dyslexia, but even when his syntax was less than perfect, his meaning was clear.
He had a reputation as a political bruiser. When a protester on the campaign trail threw an egg at him before the 2001 general election, Prescott turned and punched him. Some assumed his career was over. But polling showed that most Britons concluded that he had done what they would have done in the circumstances, and Labour’s campaign proceeded to victory uninterrupted. Blair characterised the incident as a case of “John being John”.
John Leslie Prescott was born in Wales in 1938. He did not prosper in Britain’s selective education system of the time, which streamed children’s academic futures via an examination at age 11. He failed that test and, unlike his brother, who passed, was denied the new bicycle he had been promised by his father. He left school four years later, although he subsequently studied at Ruskin College, a higher education institution in Oxford, and at the University of Hull, in the city that became his home.
As a teenager, Prescott became a steward on a cruise ship, embarking on a career at sea that was to shape his rise in politics. Years later, political opponents would taunt him by suggesting that he fetch them a gin and tonic, but he remained proud of his origins. As a senior politician, he would hold a summer party on a boat in the Thames and make a point of extracting money from his guests to tip the staff.
In 1968, Prescott became an official at the National Union of Seamen. He was elected to parliament two years later as Labour MP for Hull East, in northeastern England. He joined Labour’s top opposition team, the shadow cabinet, in 1983.
In 1994, after the death of Labour leader John Smith, Blair was elected as Smith’s successor. Prescott won the deputy leadership, a victory that reassured many traditional Labour supporters that the party was not abandoning its roots by embracing the solidly middle-class Blair, who rebranded the party as “New Labour”.
Even as Prescott became a symbol of social mobility and a mascot of “Old Labour”, he was on board with the project of modernisation and of finding “traditional values in a modern setting”, as he would put it.
His reward came when, after 18 years out of government, Labour won the 1997 general election. Prescott became both deputy prime minister and the cabinet minister responsible for the environment, transport and the regions in the new administration.
Entering his government office for the first time, Prescott, who was not normally at a loss for words, stopped in mid-sentence when the blinds started to lower. “Yes, deputy prime minister,” a civil servant explained, “it is an automatic device to control the internal temperature.”
Prescott became used to his elevated position and to the trappings of power. He was nicknamed “Two Jags” by the tabloids, which enjoyed taunting him, after it emerged that he owned two Jaguar cars. He was photographed playing croquet with his staff on the lawn at Dorneywood, the official country home that came with the job of deputy prime minister. His reputation suffered in 2006 when he admitted to a two-year affair with a civil servant.
He suffered from chronic illnesses: bulimia, which he struggled with in silence for 20 years, and type 2 diabetes, diagnosed in 1990, which he also kept quiet about.
In Prescott’s political endeavours, environmental issues were a central concern. Among his achievements were his part in negotiating the Kyoto climate change agreement.
During his decade as deputy prime minister, Prescott remained committed to advancing the causes of working people. In an interview in 2005, he said: “The one distinctive thing about the European approach, both right and left, is the belief that the social dimension goes along with the economic. The American model might produce more jobs, but it couldn’t really care a damn about the social justice.”
He retired as an MP in 2010 and was made a member of the House of Lords.
Blair paid tribute to his former deputy, telling the BBC that there was “no one quite like him in British politics” and calling Prescott “a titan of the Labour movement”.
Peter Mandelson, another architect of Labour’s modernisation who is now a member of the House of Lords, said Prescott had “kept us anchored in our working-class roots, our trade union history”.
He added: “He was in many respects the cement that kept New Labour together.”
He suffered a stroke in 2019, and was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Pauline, and two sons. – The New York Times