John Prescott: a titan of the Labour movement

John Prescott, Britain’s longest serving Deputy Prime Minister, has died at the age of 86. For 40 years he variously enlivened, enraged and entertained the Commons as the Honourable Member for Hull East. But his demeanour and public image belied a canny political judgement that took him from Merchant Navy seaman to holding some of the highest political offices in the land. From 1994 until 2007, he served as Tony Blair’s deputy, serving as the yang to his leader’s yin.

With his capacity for beer and brawls, Prescott sometimes seemed an unlikely moderniser among the metropolitan liberals of the New Labour elite. But he was key to securing the triumph of the Labour right in the early 1990s, delivering the closing speech of the 1993 Labour conference in which he rallied support for John Smith over the one member one vote system. Prescott’s passionate speech – ‘our leader put his head on the block’ – won the day, securing Smith’s leadership and paving the way for Blair’s succession and the electoral hegemony that followed.