John Prescott

John Prescott, 2007

John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott (born May 31, 1938 in Prestatyn , Wales ) is a British Labor Party politician and was Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the government of Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007 .

Life

John Prescott, the son of a railroad signalman, grew up in Ellesmere Port , Cheshire . He worked as a cargo master on merchant ships on the Cunard Line and was a union activist . On November 1, 1961, he married Pauline "Tilly" Tilston. He studied economics and economic history at Ruskin College , Oxford and Hull University. After graduating, he worked full-time as a functionary for the National Union of Seamen . In 1970 Prescott was elected to the House of Commons as a member of the Kingston upon Hull East constituency.

Prescott held several posts in the Labor Party's shadow cabinet . After the sudden death of Labor chairman John Smith in May 1994, Prescott was elected deputy party leader.

After the Labor Party's victory in the 1997 general election , Tony Blair appointed him deputy prime minister. As Minister, Prescott headed the newly created Department of Transport, Environment and Regions.

In 1998, Prescott was a guest at the Brit Awards ceremony . There Danbert Nobacon , singer of the band Chumbawamba , emptied a jug of ice water over him and said: "This is for the dock workers in Liverpool".

During the 2001 general election campaign , Prescott made headlines when he punched a protester in the jaw with a left-hand punch who had pelted him with eggs. After the elections, his “super ministry” was split up, causing him to lose influence. A year later he again took over most of the tasks in the area of ​​local and regional administration.

On April 26, 2006, it became known that Prescott had an affair with his secretary Tracey Temple between 2002 and 2004 . The secret meetings between the two took place in Prescott's office in Whitehall .

After the defeat of the Labor Party in the local elections in England on May 4, 2006 in the context of reporting on Prescott's extramarital affairs and sexual assault took Prime Minister Blair the next day a reshuffle before and withdrew Prescott his ministry, but he decided to leave the post of Deputy Prime Minister . On September 28, Prescott announced that he would be resigning from his post as vice-premier in the next twelve months on an unspecified date. He finally announced his resignation immediately after Blair's resignation announcement on May 10, 2007.

Prescott was a Member of the British House of Commons from 1970 to 2010 . In 2010 he was promoted to Life Peer as Baron Prescott , of Kingston upon Hull in the County of East Yorkshire , and has been a member of the House of Lords since then . In 2013 he left the Privy Council , which he had been a member of since 1994.

In July 2016, Prescott wrote in a guest article for the tabloid Sunday Mirror that, in retrospect, he regretted having agreed to Britain's participation in the 2003 Iraq war . The invasion of US and British troops at the time was illegal; the members of Tony Blair's government cabinet had received too few documents at the time to be able to make this decision.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BBC News : Blair will stand down on June 27 , May 10, 2007.
2. ↑ John Prescott Reveals his guilt at the 'illegal' Iraq War will haunt him for the rest of his life
3. ↑ zeit.de July 10, 2016: Blair's deputy considers Iraq war "illegal"
4. ↑ "were given too little paper documentation to make decisions" (BBC News July 10, 2016: John Prescott: Ex-deputy PM says Iraq War was illegal )

literature

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

Web links

Commons : John Prescott  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• parliament.uk - John Prescott