John Prescott: Difference between revisions

John Leslie Prescott MP (born May 31, 1938) is a British Labour Party politician, Deputy Prime Minister, First Secretary of State and Member of Parliament for the north east constituency of Hull East. He became Deputy Leader of the Labour Party after coming second in the Labour leadership election in 1994 and was appointed Deputy Prime Minister after Labour's landslide victory in the 1997 General Election.

A former ship's steward and trade union activist,^[1] he is presented as the political link to the "working class" in a "New" Labour party led by modernising middle class university-educated professionals, despite his own university education.

Prescott is well known for his poor speaking skills and frequent gaffes. To many he is still remembered for punching and then getting into a brawl with a farmer whilst on the 2001 general election campaign after being hit by an egg.

The son of a railway signalman (and Labour councillor) and grandson of a miner, Prescott was born in Prestatyn and brought up initially in Brinsworth in South Yorkshire, England. He attended Brinsworth Primary School, where he sat but failed the Eleven Plus examination in 1948. His family moved to Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, where he attended the Grange Secondary Modern School. To John's annoyance, his younger brother Ray passed the exam. This bitterness would last for many years. He became a steward and waiter in the Merchant Navy, working for Cunard, and was a popular left-wing union activist. He then went to the independent Ruskin College in Oxford and gained a degree in economics and economic history at the University of Hull.

He returned to the National Union of Seamen as a full-time official before being elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for Hull East in 1970, succeeding Commander Harry Pursey, the retiring Labour MP. The defeated Conservative challenger was Norman Lamont. Previously, he had attempted to become MP for Southport in 1966, but came in second place, approximately 11,000 votes behind the Conservative candidate. From 1974 to 1979, he concurrently served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and Leader of the Labour Group, when its members were nominated by the national Parliaments.

Prescott held various posts in Labour's shadow cabinet, but his career was secured by an impassioned closing speech in the debate at the Labour Party Conference in 1993 on the introduction of "one member, one vote" elections for the party leadership. The support of an old-school unionist like Prescott helped swing the vote in favour of this reform. Prescott became deputy leader with the first leadership vote under the new system following the death of John Smith in 1994, . He became an important figure in Tony Blair's "New Labour" movement, as the representative of "old Labour" interests in the Shadow Cabinet.

Prescott has gained a reputation in the British press for confused speech, mangled syntax and grammar. The Guardian columnist Simon Hoggart once commented: "Every time Prescott opens his mouth, it's like someone has flipped open his head and stuck in an egg whisk."

An oft-quoted but unverified story in Jeremy Paxman's The Political Animal is that, before being accepted as transcribers to Hansard, applicants must listen to one of Prescott's speeches and write down what he was trying to say.

One of many examples occurred at the 2006 Labour spring conference where the BBC reported "Fans of Prescottese were not disappointed as the deputy prime minister began by harking back to the bad old days when Labour had 'single finger majorities'".^[2]

In various sections of the media, he is known as "Prezza",^[3] or sometimes "Two Jags",^[4].

He has also been named "Two Jabs" ^[5] (referring to his retaliation against a protester farmer in 2001), "Two Shags"^[6] in reference to his extra-marital affairs, and "Two Shacks"^[7] (referring to his former country house).

With the election of a Labour government in 1997, Prescott was made Deputy Prime Minister and given an impressively large portfolio at the head of the newly created Department for Transport, Environment and the Regions. In July 2001, an Office of the Deputy Prime Minister was created to deal with the areas under his responsibility. ^[8] This new office was originally a part of the larger Cabinet Office, but became a department in its own right in May 2002 when it absorbed some of the resposibilities from the former Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions.

It should be noted that in the United Kingdom, the title "Deputy Prime Minister" has rarely been used and confers no specific powers (in which it is similar to the pre-20th century usage of Prime Minister). In particular, the Deputy Prime Minister draws no salary; for Prescott, salary was based on his position as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions until 2001. Upon losing that role he was given the title First Secretary of State and a much smaller department called the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister often stands in when the Prime Minister is unavailable, the most common example being at Prime Minister's Questions (usually when the Prime Minister is out of the country), although Prescott has attended various Heads of Government meetings on behalf of Tony Blair.^[9]

It is generally accepted that the second most powerful member of the present British government is the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, not John Prescott.

Prescott pursued an integrated public transport policy, with little evident success. His reputation as a friend of public transport was hardly helped by his love of large cars, which gained him the nickname "Two Jags" (see Cars and the environment below).^[10] The epithet was presumably inspired by the Monty Python sketch, "Arthur 'Two Sheds' Jackson". Prescott owns one Jaguar, and has the use of another as his official ministerial car.

Prescott has also been known in sections of the press as "Prezza", in imitation of "Hezza", an eponym for Michael Heseltine, his Conservative predecessor as Deputy Prime Minister with whom he shares a combative streak.

Prescott supported regional government in England. Early in his term, he introduced regional assemblies (consisting of delegates from local authorities) to oversee the work of new Regional Development Agencies in the regions of England. Following Labour's second election victory, he pressed for the introduction of elected regional assemblies, which would have seen about 20 members elected under a similar electoral system to that used for the London Assembly. However, due to opposition, the government was forced to hold regional referenda on the change. The first three were intended to be in the North-East, North-West and Yorkshire and Humberside. The North-East referendum in 2004 was first (where support was felt to be strongest) but resulted in an overwhelming vote of 78% against. The plan for elected regional assemblies failed.

Prescott's conduct of his Department was criticised in relation to housing development. The rising number of households (especially in the south-east) means that new houses need to be built. Given that there are insufficient "brownfield" (developed) sites, Prescott determined that some greenfield (undeveloped) sites must be used for them, including some in the Green Belt. Prescott made a gaffe in January 1998 when he declared in a radio interview that "the green belt is a Labour achievement, and we mean to build on it".

In the north of England, Prescott approved the demolition of some 200,000 homes that are judged to be in "failing areas" as part of his Pathfinder regeneration scheme. In some cases these areas are abandoned, in others the communities are resisting. In the South East (the most affluent area of the U.K.), Prescott is widely criticised for building high rise flats on sites that were formerly houses, back gardens, and green areas. There is also critique of the underlying assumptions of the proposals.^[11]

As part of his remit over planning issues Prescott introduced the Local Authorities (Code of Conduct) Order 2001. This is a statutory instrument which was not voted on by Parliament but which forbids local councillors from having a say in planning issues in which they are deemed to have a "prejudicial interest". This has been criticised for undermining local democracy and severely curtailing freedom of speech, by effectively preventing councillors from representing the views of the communities which elected them.^[12]

On 17 December 2005, Prescott made public his disapproval of Tony Blair's plans to give state schools the right to govern their finances and admission policies and to increase the number of city academies.^[13] Prescott, who failed to gain a place at a grammar school because he failed the Eleven Plus entrance examination, said that the move would create a two-tier educational system that would discriminate against the working class. In an interview that was the first that Prescott has made against Blair since his election as leader in 1994, he also said that the spirit of "fighting class" should be brought back to the Labour Party, an ideal that sits uneasily amongst many middle-class MPs in his parliamentary party.^[14]

In a Cabinet reshuffle on 5 May 2006, Prescott was stripped of his department following lurid revelations about his private life (see below) and poor performance by Labour in UK local elections. He remained as deputy PM, with a seat in the Cabinet, and was given a role as special envoy to the Far East ^[15]. His department was effectively transferred to Ruth Kelly as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

The British press reported on 9 July 2006 that as a consequence of the continuing problems centred on Prescott, Blair is preparing to replace him as Deputy Prime Minister with David Milliband MP, whilst possibly retaining Prescott as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.^[16]

Prescott has been involved in a number of controversies and incidents that have caused public concern and widespread media interest.

The incidents in the subsidiary article are:

• Brit Awards, 1998; a jug of iced water poured over him in a protest
• Cars and the environment; fined for speeding
• Fighting with a protester; farmer threw an egg at him and responded with a punch
• Council tax; repays council tax on Admiralty House
• Sexual infidelities and harassment allegations; including his affair with Tracey Temple
• Benefits controversy; forced to give up houses after losing his department
• Croquet controversy; photographed playing croquet at Dorneywood when acting Prime Minister
• Phil Anschutz affair; super casino planning row
• Absent during airport terrorism plot?; Reid in charge?
• Comments about Bush Administration; 'Bush is crap' comment
• Johnathan Prescott involvement; did he have any connection with his son's business dealings?

• Punchlines: A Crash Course in English with John Prescott by Simon Hoggart (Pocket Books, 2003) ISBN 0-7434-8397-9
• Fighting Talk: Biography of John Prescott by Colin Brown (Simon & Schuster, 1997) ISBN 0-684-81798-5

Wikiquote has quotations related to John Prescott.

• 10 Downing Street - John Prescott official site
• BBC Profile
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: John Prescott MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - John Prescott MP
• Mr Prescott and his gaffes