John Prescott has long been the laughing stock of British politics. Pompous, incoherent and serving no obviously useful function he is occasionally nominally in charge of running the British state. Yet inside the Labour Party he has been seen as a central figure. On one hand he is the living proof that anyone from a trade union background can still rise to almost the top of the party. Blair’s core personnel, with the exception of Alan Johnson, have virtually no experience or connection with the party’s union support. Prescott has provided the “working class” camouflage for the Blaire transformation of New Labour. During the 1980s he became an early advocate of using the private sector to provide public services and has been moving right ever since.

His usefulness to Blair has been rewarded with handsome perks and salaries. Yet every department for which he has been given responsibility has been a shambles. He made a hash of transport policy but was then given the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. This gave him responsibility for planning, local government and regional assemblies.

In many ways Prescott is the ultimate symbol of everything that is rotten about British Labourism. He started off as a shop steward in the merchant navy, entered Parliament and has worked his way up the Labour Party. At every step he allowed himself to be seduced by the baubles of power and office. The “working class” minister was quite content to have his free government apartment, his ministerial Jaguar cars and was heartbroken when he lost to right to use the country house at Dorneywood. Alan Johnson has been publicly salivating at the prospect of inheriting Prescott’s perks. He too is another working class militant who has been bought by the British ruling class.

Blair and Prescott deserve each other. They are both in their own ways responsible for New Labour’s imperialist neo-liberalism. They are allowing David Cameron to resurrect the Tories and on some issues appear more left liberal than New Labour. As we report in this issue they are also fertilising the ground for the emergence of the BNP as a credible electoral force. New Labour has nothing to offer working people in Britain. Respect’s successes in the local government elections demonstrates that there is a audience for radical, socialist and anti-imperialist politics and that is what supporters of Socialist Resistance will be building.