Fiery John Prescott was proud to be a blunt-speaking Northerner – he was last authentic voice of Britain’s working class
JOHN Prescott, a former Cunard Line waiter who rose to be deputy Prime Minister under Tony Blair, was the last authentic voice of the working classes to serve in high office.
The MP for Hull, known as The Mouth of The Humber, spoke for the trade unions in a New Labour government which finally broke their stranglehold over economic and industrial policy.
As deputy leader of the Labour Party, he also refereed the infamous
“TeeBee-GeeBees” flare-ups between Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown during their battle for the Labour crown.
Burly “Prezza”, a prize-winning boxer, was a bruiser both inside and outside Parliament.
In the 2001 election campaign, he was hit in the face by an egg thrown by a protestor.
Prescott, a man with a hair-trigger temper, landed a powerful left jab before police intervened.
“There was only one punch,” he explained afterwards. “Tony Blair rang and asked what happened.
“I said: ‘You told us to connect with the electorate, so I did’.”
Lord Prescott, who has died aged 86, was proud of his working-class roots and as a blunt-speaking Northerner.
But he was born in Prestatyn and regarded himself as a Welshman.
In later life he admitted carrying a chip on his shoulder after his brother Ray was rewarded with a new bike for passing his 11-plus to a grammar school.
John failed and got nothing.
What he saw as a gross injustice fuelled a lifelong resentment towards elitism – even within his own party – and an insecurity which drove him close to the top of the political greasy pole.
He was deeply hurt that in 10 years as deputy PM, he and his glamorous wife, Pauline – an Elizabeth Taylor lookalike – were never invited to dinner at Chequers, the PM’s official home.
Prescott blamed Blair’s “snobbish” wife, Cherie.
“We never got close to the Blairs,” he said. “It just didn’t happen. We were not their set. Certainly we were not her set.”
The former ship’s steward was mocked by toffee-nosed Tories such as
Nicholas Soames who greeted him in the Commons, crying: “Mine’s a gin-and-tonic, Giovanni.”
And he was teased for mangling the English language, once complaining “the sceptre of unemployment stalking the north-east”.
As Environment supremo, he boasted: “The Green Belt is a Labour
achievement – and we mean to build on it.”
But the son of a railway signaller was no fool.
He studied economics and politics at Ruskin College, Oxford, and scored a BSc degree at Hull University.
He enjoyed his success, living in a turreted mock-Tudor mansion and playing croquet on the lawns of his official home, Dorneywood.
An avowed socialist, he earned his “Two Jags” nickname by driving an XJ6 Jaguar and using a chauffeur-driven XJ8 for government business.
“My roots, my background, the way I act is working class, but it would by hypocritical to say I’m anything other than middle class now,” he admitted.
John Prescott’s remarkable political career crumbled dramatically in 2006 when his two-year love affair with bubbly secretary Tracey Temple was exposed after her jealous lover read her diary.
Tracey, who sold her story to a Sunday newspaper for £250,000, described “groping and kissing” in the Deputy PM’s office and his opulent grace-and-favour Admiralty office flat.
“We were very lucky we were never caught – as we never shut the door,” noted Tracey, played by Maxine Peake in “Confessions of a Diary Secretary”.
“When I went into his office for diary meetings, if I was wearing a skirt he would slide his hand up my leg, under it.
“He used to stroke my back. And, yes, I did give him sex in the office a
couple of times.
“I knew what we were doing was risky but we both got carried away.
“Seven civil servants worked right outside his office. Of course there were moments when I thought, I shouldn’t be doing this.
“I also thought how surprised and shocked people would be if this ever got out.”
Prezza resigned as deputy Labour leader telling the 2006 party conference: “I know I let myself down. I let you down.
“So conference, I apologise.”
Nine years later he returned to front-line politics as unpaid adviser to Ed Miliband on climate change.
Prescott suffered a stroke while campaigning for Mr Corbyn at the 2019 election and retired from politics.