John Prescott, Tony Blair’s angry deputy prime minister in the UK, dies at the age of 86

John Prescott, who was Britain’s Tony Blair’s haughty deputy prime minister for 10 years, died on Thursday after a long fight with Alzheimer’s. He was 86 years old.

Blair had Prescott as his deputy from 1997 to 2007. Prescott was known as an honest leader who helped bring together the traditional left-wing and the modernizers in the Labour Party.

Blair told BBC radio, “There was no one quite like him in British politics.” “I don’t think, to be honest, I’d ever met anyone quite like John, and I still don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like him, and I’m very sad that he’s passed.”

In 2001, while running for office, he reportedly punched a voter after being hit with an egg. He was a proud trade unionist who was called a “old-school political bruiser.”

“I was just thinking this morning about the time someone hit him in the head with an egg, and he punched the guy and knocked him out… As Blair put it, “he didn’t really follow any rules.”

Prescott was born in a house by the sea in Wales on May 31, 1938. His dad worked as a railroad signalman and his mom was a housekeeper.

When he was 17, he went to work as a waiter on a fancy cruise ship where crew members would fight to entertain the guests.

After he got to land, he got involved in politics and went to Oxford’s Ruskin College, which had classes for older people.

Prescott became a member of parliament in 1970 and made his way up. From 1997 to 2007, when the Labour Party won three historic elections, he was a key player in all of them.

In the often-tense relationship between Blair and his future successor, Gordon Brown, he helped keep the peace. Later, he was called “Two Jags” because he drove his government car the 200 yards to keep his wife’s hair from flying around in the wind.

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The press made fun of him for not being able to speak well, and his image took a hit when he admitted to having an affair with his younger diary secretary for a long time in April 2006.

But Blair said Prescott was one of the smartest politicians he had ever met and that he had been very important in keeping the “whole show together” during Labour’s ten years in power.

Brown said Prescott was a Labour hero who “despite an outwardly deceptive image of uncompromising toughness” saw the good in everyone. He was called a “one-off” by Keir Starmer, who is the current prime minister of Labour.

“As one of the key architects of a Labour government, John achieved that rare thing: he changed people’s lives, and he set the path for us all to follow,” Starmer said. “He did it all in his own way, with humor, with pride, passion and total conviction.”

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore was one of the politicians who paid respect to Prescott. He praised his work on negotiating the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Prescott thought it was his most important accomplishment.

“I’ve never worked with anyone in politics — on my side of the pond or this — quite like John Prescott,” he said.

Pauline, Prescott’s wife of 63 years, and their two kids will miss him. “Alone with the love of his family and the jazz music of Marian Montgomery,” his family said he had died.

“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,” it said.