John Prescott has died at the age of 86, “surrounded by the love of his family and the jazz music of Marian Montgomery.”
The former deputy Prime Minister had a mixed relationship with the media, from making waves at the start of his career, by jumping in the Thames, to throwing a punch on the election trail, which could have ended it.
He would also take on the tabloids while in the House of Lords and also turned his hand to presenting – mainly about his beloved North of England.
This morning, his family released a statement to say:
“We are deeply saddened to inform you that our beloved husband, father and grandfather, John Prescott, passed away peacefully yesterday at the age of 86.
“He did so surrounded by the love of his family and the jazz music of Marian Montgomery.
“John spent his life trying to improve the lives of others, fighting for social justice and protecting the environment, doing so from his time as a waiter on the cruise liners to becoming Britain’s longest serving Deputy Prime Minister.
“John dearly loved his home of Hull and representing its people in Parliament for 40 years was his greatest honour.
“As you can imagine, our family needs to process our grief so we respectfully request time and space to mourn in private. Thank you. Pauline, Johnathan and David Prescott.”
Lord Prescott was in a care home, having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and his family asked for people to donate to Alzheimer’s Research UK instead of giving flowers.
“We would like to thank the amazing NHS doctors and nurses who cared for him after his stroke in 2019 and the dedicated staff at the care home where he passed away after latterly living with Alzheimer’s,” they added.
Born in Prestatyn, he left school at 15 to work in the Merchant Navy, he got a diploma in economics and politics at Oxford, before studying for an economics degree at Hull University.
He first entered parliament in 1970, when elected as the MP for Kingston upon Hull East, the constituency he represented for almost 4 decades.
In the late 70s he was made a Labour frontbencher and joined the Shadow Cabinet in 1983 – that same year saw him swim the Thames to highlight opposition to the government’s policy of duping nuclear waste at sea.
The longest-serving deputy Prime Minister, he held the post throughout Tony Blair’s government, between 1997 and 2007, despite some headline-winning gaffes. Most notably becoming known as “two Jags” for taking his ministerial Jaguar a 200-yard journey between the Labour conference and his hotel. This was all the more embarrassing, given his campaigning to urge people to ditch their vehicles for environmental reasons.
On the Today programme, Blair said “he had a fantastic gut instinct about politics.”
Talking about another of Prescott’s most infamous moments, when he punched a man who threw an egg at him during the 2001 campaign, Blair recalled of “two Jabs”:
“This caused a huge fracas obviously, and was an immense media story. We had to give a press conference in the election campaign the next day,” he told Today.
“Some people were saying ‘he’s deputy Prime Minister, you can’t have a deputy Prime Minister thumping a voter’ and then there were other people saying ‘yeah, but he had this egg slammed on his head and he turned round and whacked the guy and a lot of people think, well, fair enough’.
“We had a long debate about it, and finally at the press conference when I was asked about it, I said ‘John is John.’
“There were no rules that he really abided by.”
During the same programme, presenter, Nick Robinson, remembered the much shared incident when Prescott didn’t realise he was doing a live interviews:
“Prescott once stumbled in an interview with me getting confused about what he was trying to say,” said Robinson.
“‘Oh I made that crap,’ he said ‘can we go again?’ My reply ‘We are, in fact, live deputy Prime Minister’.
“At the end of the interview we both laughed so much it hurt.”
He received a peerage in 2010, later advising Ed Miliband and supporting Jeremy Corbyn. He was also outspoken in the Lords about the government’s response to the phone-hacking scandal.
He believed that News of the World had placed him under surveillance and in 2012 he won a pay out from the paper’s parent company, News International.
It was only in July that he stopped being a member of the House Of Lords, this was due to non-attendance. He’d suffered a stroke in 2019.
Before this, he presented a number of documentaries, including Prescott: The North South Divide, with his wife Pauline, on BBC Two, he also hosted Made in Yorkshire, British Made and even had a cameo in Gavin and Stacey.
Ed Miliband wrote today:
“I am deeply saddened to hear of the death of John Prescott. He was a titan of the Labour movement, a unique and irreplaceable fighter for justice.
He fought for social and economic equality all his life, championed the cause of the environment and showed how politics could change lives for the better.
“John represented the best of Labour values and I will always be grateful for the support he provided to me as Labour leader. I extend my deepest condolences to Pauline, Jonathan and David.”
Tracy Brabin, the Mayor for West Yorkshire also paid tribute:
“Deeply sad news to hear of John Prescott’s passing. Yorkshire has lost one of its great political heavyweights. A true Northerner with unwavering authenticity. John’s record speaks for itself: tackling regional inequalities, fighting for social justice and protecting the environment,” she wrote on X.
“We must all now build on his legacy and work tirelessly, as he did, to create a country that works for all.”
[Photo John Prescott family – X]
