QUENTIN LETTS: For sketch writers, Prescott was our Everest, our woolly-fisted yeti – irresistibly abominable
John Prescott had died and so MPs, some of whom may even have known him, lined up to perjure themselves.
Cabinet minister Louise Haigh began the parliamentary day by recalling ‘a visionary transport secretary’.
Mark Ferguson (Lab, Gateshead Central and Whickham) said ‘rarely has there been a better example of the fact that working people are meant to govern’.
Kemi Badenoch thought he had been a ‘true patriot – no one who had two Jags could not love this country’.
Sir Keir Starmer claimed that Lord Prescott ‘set the path for us all to follow’. The Prime Minister, ever one to furnish a stately occasion with its most plodding epigram, bit on his lip and averred ‘his legacy lives on in all of us’.
At the King’s English Society, meanwhile, a cellar door creaked and a few dazed souls in tin helmets emerged blinking into daylight, asking: ‘Is it finally safe to come out?’
To which the answer is: ‘Maybe not.’ Formal tributes will follow in the Commons next week – it is not impossible that some nonsense will be uttered.
For parliamentary sketch writers, John Prescott was our Everest, our woolly-fisted yeti, irresistibly abominable.
John Prescott’s family announced his passing away today at the age 86 after a battle with alzheimer’s
Prescott was an animated speaker, seen here riling up the crowd at a 2017 general election event
‘Stenographers would gaze at his raw verbiage and somehow have to assemble credible sentences’, writes Quentin Letts
Sir Keir Starmer claimed that Lord Prescott ‘set the path for us all to follow’. The Prime Minister, ever one to furnish a stately occasion with its most plodding epigram, bit on his lip and averred ‘his legacy lives on in all of us’
Hansard stenographers would gaze at his raw verbiage and somehow have to assemble credible sentences, like British Museum restorers gluing shards of Grecian urn dropped by Brian from the Minoan depository.
‘We will eliminate the homeless by 2008,’ Prescott once bellowed.
Another boast was that ‘the Green Belt is a Labour achievement and we intend to build on it’. With knowing superiority he confided: ‘If I was to read everything that I read about myself in the papers I wouldn’t have time to do my job.’
Read the papers he did, though. He was gloriously thin-skinned.
Words would geyser out of him, flying to the Commons chamber’s furthest walls, spraying everyone with boiling gibberish.
‘It’s not the sanity of the picket lines that bothers me,’ he vouchsafed, ‘it’s the sanity of human life’.
Soon after he was caught bonking his diary secretary he had to enter a jeering Commons to deputise for Tony Blair at PMQs.
When he began with a reference to his ‘day-to-day activities’ there were peals of merriment from his opponents.
Prescott served as deputy Prime Minister in the Tony Blair administration
Prescott was born in Wales to a railway signalman and a domestic helper and was always a staunch defender of his working class roots
Prescott was known for making his point, seen here exiting the Thames after swimming to Westminster Bridge from Chelsea in protest over the dumping of nuclear waste at sea
During the 2005 election I tried to report on Prescott’s campaign. His itinerary was kept secret, but I tracked him to Edgbaston and was there to greet him when he alighted from his bus
A then Labour MP for Swindon, Anne Snelgrove, took exception to this laughter and shouted: ‘We’re proud of him.’
Tory heckler: ‘She’ll be next!’ Ms Snelgrove, a ringer for Ronnie Barker, almost exploded with crossness.
Prescott seldom demonstrated much grasp of detail yet he became a political fixture. There’s a lesson in that: We look to politicians as much for caricature as for government.
It would be wrong, though, to eulogise him as a working-class trailblazer, or even as much of a democrat.
John Major came from just as hard a childhood and achieved more, doing so without grammatical incident.
During the 2005 election I tried to report on Prescott’s campaign. His itinerary was kept secret, but I tracked him to Edgbaston and was there to greet him when he alighted from his bus.
He took it badly, screaming, ‘It’s the fascist, look, that’s what the fascist Daily Mail looks like!’ while a female assistant led him to safety. Only one of us that day was interested in democratic scrutiny, and it was not the Rt Hon Member.
File image of former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Deputy Prime Minister, Lord John Prescott poses with boxing gloves on as he joins Labour candidate Anna Turley on a visit to an Amateur Boxing Club on May 1, 2015
One of Prescott’s principal responsibilities was acting as the broker in the fraught relationship shared by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown
‘Prescott seldom demonstrated much grasp of detail yet he became a political fixture. There’s a lesson in that’, writes Quentin Letts
Some of the Left-wingers who yesterday hailed Prescott’s background were markedly less positive about blue-collar views at the time of Brexit
Now he has been gathered. But please, we can do without the ‘visionary’ stuff.
His M4 bus lane was soon scrapped, as was his ten-year integrated transport plan.
He was Blair’s token mechanical.
Some of the Left-wingers who yesterday hailed Prescott’s background were markedly less positive about blue-collar views at the time of Brexit.
Towards the end I would see him pottering along the cloisters towards the House of Lords, having come down from Hull on his own by train.
It was clear he was drifting into a land of his own and he would beam at me in a misty way. I was no longer ‘the fascist’. Funnily enough, I never was.
