Blunt and brusque Prescott was an underestimated wit

John Prescott was a nice man and an underestimated wit. I once worked as a researcher on my late colleague Colin Brown’s biography of him, Fighting Talk, published in 1997, just before Prescott became deputy PM.

Not quite realising the scale of the challenge, I’d volunteered to plough through all the Hansards. It turned out to be a time-consuming task, given that Prescott was first elected in 1970 and was famously voluble. At the launch of the book, I nervously approached the great man and thought I’d ingratiate myself by telling him that I’d read everything that he’d ever said in parliament (which was true). “Oh?” he replied. “Did any of it make any sense?”

The line was delivered with effortlessly brilliant comedic timing, presumably honed through years of shipmates’ banter and political roughhousing; and was as self-deprecating as he felt he had the right to be — unlike the snooty critics who used to sneer at him.

As Tony Blair pointed out a couple of years later, those who used to disparage and undermine him did so because they didn’t believe people like John should be in the cabinet running the country. Blair was right. Those very same people are still trying to do the same corrosive job on the likes of Angela Rayner, because they don’t think someone like her, with her accent and her working-class background, should be deputy prime minister, either.

Of course, what Prescott said always made perfect sense — even if the words didn’t. We always knew what he meant. There may be a name for this phenomenon, though maybe “Prescottism” is the nearest we’ll ever get. It was very much like the old Eric Morecambe line to Andre Previn about his terrible piano playing: “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”.

Prescott’s Commons contributions were certainly clearer to students like me after the Hansard writers tidied up the slips, fixed the syntax and filled in the missing words — as they do for all MPs. In Prescott’s case, it’s fair to say, they should have got danger money. Matthew Parris, a former Tory MP and a fine observer of the scene, once published a verbatim account of some of Prescott’s remarks, set against how they were printed in the official record:

“I mean that’s an example of this government that believes in the private sector and is in fact damaged the public sector’s handling within the public sector in a number of these areas and you can go on with them in another areas.”

Became: “The government’s insistence on private sector terms has damaged the public sector.” And: “So I think the basic point that it is necessary in order to have private capital in our industries to get the extra resources that we do want that you have to be privatised is not borne out by the facts in other countries and neither we should we have it here also and if he’s any doubts about that go and have a look at the reports that talk it.”

Became: A blank. Hansard gave up. My favourite, of many, remains: “The green belt is a Labour achievement and we intend to build on it” — still a pertinent point today. These Prescottisms were all part of the man’s charm, part of his unusual skill as a communicator. They embellish — rather than detract from — his long and distinguished career; what he did for his party and what he did for his country.

Few really objected to him punching the man with a mullet who smashed an egg on his head in the 2001 election. John Prescott was far from perfect — those closest to him understand that — but the nation, bar the snobs, really liked the guy. He made a lot of sense, actually.