Former British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott dies at the age of 86

LONDON, Britain (AFP) – Former British deputy prime minister John Prescott, who served under Tony Blair and helped him transform the country’s Labor Party, has died at the age of 86, his family said Thursday, prompting concerns from across the political spectrum to pay tribute.

Prescott, a former merchant seaman and trade union activist who was a member of parliament for Hull in northern England for four decades, died “peacefully” in a nursing home, said his wife Pauline and two sons.

“He did it surrounded by the love of his family and the jazz music of Marian Montgomery,” they wrote in a statement.

Prescott, who was Blair’s no-nonsense deputy during all 10 years he was prime minister from 1997 to 2007, suffered a stroke in 2019 and more recently suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, forcing him to step down from the House of Lords in July this year.

Blair, a privately educated lawyer who appointed working-class Prescott to help appease Labour’s left as he moved the party to a more electable center, said he was “devastated” by Prescott’s death.

“There was no one like him in British politics,” he told BBC Radio, and his successor, Gordon Brown, called him a “colossus” and “titan of the labor movement.”