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The portentous adjectives roll off the tongue as the great and good of politics elevate John Prescott to the Pantheon of British politics. He was a big fella, but here 10 things that I

recall about the last big working class leader Britain is likely to have. 1) He was denied a place at a Rotherham Grammar School, attended by William Hague. England’s  post-war schools

divided children into first and second class future citizens at age 11. Not based on ability, but on the number of grammar school places available. Prescott was born in Wales, but from the

age of four lived in South Yorkshire. He was a victim of England’s class division based on education, until Labour began to bring in comprehensives and above all Tony Blair expanded

university education. 2) Prescott in due course went to Ruskin College, gaining in his own way an Oxford education like Tony Blair or Boris Johnson. He also attended Hull University, whose

current chancellor is Alan Johnson, like Prescott a working class boy. For them the trade union movement provided a training ground in economics, social policy, and oracy as good as many a

Treasury or Bank of England graduate trainee. 3) He was pure working class, like Aneuran Bevan or today Angela Rayner, but avoided the two working class jobs of South Yorkshire – down into a

coal mine or sweating in a steel plant. Instead, at age 15 he became a steward on passenger ships, especially cruise liners. He charmed many lonely ladies in his young days. Charm is an

under-estimated political attribute. Prescott was, in the political sense of the word, an all-round charmer. He was serious, but had a permanent twinkle in his eye. 4) He became famous early

when Harold Wilson denounced him as a part of “a tightly knit group of politically motivated men” who were being manipulated by “communists” during the 1966 National Union of Seamen’s

strike. Wilson never fully controlled the labour movement and was humiliated by the TUC when unions prevented his trade union reforms after 1968. It was not the young Prescott who mattered

but another former sailor – James Callaghan – who seized the opportunity to damage Barbara Castle. She had left behind her Oxford leftism in order to modernise trade union practices and

industrial relations with her Bill “In Place of Strife”. Callaghan sided with Prescott and the TUC to defeat Wilson and Castle. Labour’s failure to reform trade unions thus opened the door

to Edward Heath, who won the 1970 election. 5) Callaghan rewarded Prescott, who was elected MP for Hull at the early age of 32 in 1970. Before direct elections for MEPs, the European

Parliamentary Assembly consisted of national MPs nominated by their governments. Callaghan sent Prescott to Strasbourg, where he learnt first-hand that the European Community was not the

monster depicted by upper-class Oxbridge British politicians like Tony Benn and Boris Johnson, but just a sensible way to work in open market partnership under common rules — which included

a role for trade unions. While Labour big beasts under Mrs Thatcher like Neil Kinnock, Robin Cook, or Margaret Beckett wanted to leave Europe, Prescott ignored their nonsense and quietly

made the case for keeping European partnership alive. 6) Under Mrs Thatcher Prescott became shadow transport secretary and insisted that the UK could learn from Europe on better ways to run

railways. So today France is covered by high-speed rail links and Paris has eight equivalents of the Elizabeth Line, while Britain still worships at the shrine of the motor car. 7) As did

Prescott. When I became an MP in 1994 he told me. “Get yourself a second hand Jag, Denis. There are plenty of cheap ones in South Yorkshire – it’s a working class car up there. The Commons

mileage system is based on the size of the engine so the mileage is good running up and down to Rotherham. After a couple of years, trade it in for a new one.” Prezza thus gave me my first

tutorial on the exotic nature of MPs’ allowances and expenses, even if with four children under 10 I needed a people carrier, not a Jaguar. 8) In the great reforms after the 1992 defeat to

make Labour electable, Prescott by now was fed up with the juvenile Tony Benn-Jeremy Corbyn leftism that won applause at Labour activist rallies but kept the Tories in power. Instead, he

allied first with John Smith and then Tony Blair to bring a Nye Bevan or Herbert Morrison working class sensibility into the New Labour leadership. He mocked the Third Way and the “beautiful

people” from North London around Blair, but he wanted power and a Labour government. He knew Blair could deliver both. 9) Yes, he mangled English. When Labour decided to take on Milosevic

after years of Tory appeasement of the butcher of Belgrade, Prescott had to announce an RAF attack on Belgrade in a late night Commons statement as Blair was away. The mean Foreign Office

gave him a short statement to read, but officials assumed in their superior way Prezza could pronounce “Milosevic”. He came to his name, looked startled and pronounced it “Mile-os-officz”

and then “Miss-loffitz” and then gave up, saying  “Well, Mr Speaker, we all know who I mean.” 10) He was very popular in northern working class towns, what would become known as “red wall”

seats. The day after he thumped  someone in the 2001 election, his battle bus came to Rotherham. I took him to Rotherham Market. The first thing he saw were two trestle tables laden with

eggs for sale. He took one look and grimaced. “Fooking hell, Denis, why have you brought me here?” He eyed the eggs warily. “Don’t worry”, I said. And indeed the shoppers crowded round

cheering their local lad who had become DPM and didn’t hesitate to thump an idiot who had been rude and aggressive.  The nation took John Prescott to its heart and forgave his verbal

stumbles. Tory journalists often patronised him, but along with Tony Blair John Prescott  gave Labour its longest period of consecutive government ever. Not bad for a Rotherham lad who had

left school at 15. _ Denis Macshane worked with John Prescott as a minister in the Tony Blair government. They both served on the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly. _ A MESSAGE FROM

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