We are in a real fight now

John Prescott says Labour MPs must get together and take on the Tories.

John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister

ANDREW MARR: Well John Prescott is here now. Welcome.

JOHN PRESCOTT: Andrew, before we start, I heard the p..., news in the papers today, but they didn't mention the most important news - Hull, top town in top league. We're proud of it.

It was a great match yesterday. So to everybody in Hull enjoy the congratulations. It's a long time coming. ...

ANDREW MARR: That's what makes you happy. Okay. The book that you produced caused an absolute wave of, of consternation when you talked about your bulimia.

And you say yourself, perhaps not if I put this politely the most successful bulimic on the planet ..

JOHN PRESCOTT: Ha, ha, ha. A lot of journalists were saying that. But if you understand it in fact ..

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

JOHN PRESCOTT: .. you can get fatter not thinner.

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

JOHN PRESCOTT: I mean that's part of the psychology if you like. And that was the misconceptions and the reason why I wanted to say something about it. It was a little while ago, a couple of years ago.

I am a diabetic as well. And I thought you have to get this out. So I launched a campaign with Alan Milburn to bring home to people that tiredness might be caused by a diabetic. Go and have yourself checked or you may face serious consequences. And I thought about bulimia.

And people said to me "Well don't put that in". I said "Well it was part of my life that and I think I should do that". And if you read the letters I've received Andrew from mothers and fathers and people who are, have been suffering that in silence, they feel by opening up the debate hopefully that may get them be able to deal with it as I did.

ANDREW MARR: Yes, should be talked about.

JOHN PRESCOTT: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: And it's presumably, I mean the serious point is also that the sheer stress and strain that people at the top of politics are under which probably those of us who are not don't fully understand.

JOHN PRESCOTT: I'm not sure you can put it down totally to that. When Tony Crossland died there was a great examination of MPs' work limits as to whether stress had played a part. I don't think it was conclusive. In my case the consultant did say to me perhaps that was the concern.

But they don't know exactly. But I think it does contribute. If you're working sixteen, seventeen hours a day, then you get home to your flat and you open your box, you feel you want to eat and you go through that, that I think is associated with long hours working. And people now say to me funny enough "You're looking a lot better John".

You know why? Largely because I stopped that silly business, eventually got a grip of it. But what it was doing was poisoning the glands. So when the press were writing me as the kind of new Dawson, Les Dawson, you know bulbous looking figure - I've not reduced a great deal of weight but it has stopped that poisoning of the glands ..

ANDREW MARR: Right, yeah.

JOHN PRESCOTT: .. and the other problems associated with it. So hopefully we can have a more open debate by it, though some stupid journalists quite frank, writing that really it's not important.

I think if they got my letters and listened to people who are desperate in their silence about it and ashamed I would think hopefully I've helped them.

ANDREW MARR: It is ..

JOHN PRESCOTT: And I've joined BEAT(?) of course now to try and bring it home to more people. That's the organisation that deals with it.

ANDREW MARR: People also used to say when you were Deputy Prime Minister, what does a Deputy Prime Minister actually do. Well among all the things you spent an awful lot of your time keeping Tony Blair and Gordon Brown apart or trying to get them to talk when they weren't talking.

JOHN PRESCOTT: Yeah but I was still getting on with the job. And I think that's one of the reasons I wanted to produce the book. Because if I read the journalists, what they say I've been doing, doing nothing, no job.

Well I think if you look at my record it's clearly pointed out there from nineteen ninety seven, right through, a lot of things I achieved, from Kyoto in the international areas, if I look at the economy, I was one of the few politicians that wrote the policies on transport et cetera in Opposition then implemented it.

So what I would like people to do when they read this book is judge me on the record, whether I was doing the job, how much time was spent with Blair and Brown - that's an important job for these two men were brilliant. And they are brilliant men who did a tremendous job. We would not have won three elections without them.

So the book, book is a matter of record. And of course only two chapters are about Brown and Blair. There's a whole load of chapters ..

ANDREW MARR: Sure.

JOHN PRESCOTT: .. before I came into ..

ANDREW MARR: Sure.

JOHN PRESCOTT: .. politics as a trade union, then into politics and I hope people will see a judgment of my life.

ANDREW MARR: But the, what you were doing in terms of the peace making role was very important wasn't it?

JOHN PRESCOTT: To my mind yes. And indeed I was elected as the Deputy Leader. I think everybody knew I wasn't going to be a leader though I stood for both positions. They wanted a balance and they thought that balance was Tony Blair and myself.

And they wanted to say in a way well John will keep him on track. My view was traditional values in a modern setting. I never used the New Labour tag. It was an important part for the development of Labour. But I was able then to say to them look, let's keep a balance. You two guys - and I used to make conference speeches about it. The contribution of you both is very important. And there were tensions. There were creative tensions. There's bound to have been.

ANDREW MARR: And ..

JOHN PRESCOTT: I hope I play a part in saying keep on the direction. I never got round saying sack Gordon Brown or resign. You see the book. That's a load of nonsense.

ANDREW MARR: What you were doing is, you were frustrated by, by the situation.

JOHN PRESCOTT: Absolutely was.

ANDREW MARR: And you were knocking some heads together. Actually I was quite struck by the extent to which you felt that in the end Tony Blair had been unfair, had welched on a deal with Gordon Brown, kept promising that he was going to go and kept changing his mind. Therefore Brown's brooding, prickly, crossness, from your point of view, was, was at least understandable?

JOHN PRESCOTT: Yes. I think though that Cherie Blair says in her book right, which is clearly designed to be anti-Brown as Lord Levy was and I got caught up in the three of them unfortunately, and they put them together.

But I think she says that Tony was going to go. And I record it in the book, one of the times he said, and she persuaded him, along with John Reid and others then to, to stay.

And that was an argument that was going on, something that was in the press. I just took the view that we need to keep them going in the same direction together. But each time you made a promise to do something as you find in the book ..

ANDREW MARR: To, to Gordon Brown.

JOHN PRESCOTT: .. and then - well ..

ANDREW MARR: Anyone else.

JOHN PRESCOTT: .. you never completed it. Tony was very good at letting you think he thought something and I think that's what made a lot of people a little bitter with Tony sometimes. They thought he had Tony on board but Tony was quite brilliant at that. I always used to say that Tony was like, you know that model car that comes up against the wall and stops and then goes round ..

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

JOHN PRESCOTT: .. that people when it stops they think that Tony's on board. But Tony's quite brilliant at managing all that. Both of them were brilliant. And Brown, haven't changed in the last few months from being a, a brilliant politician.

ANDREW MARR: So what's gone wrong? Cos you must be pretty despairing when you see what's happened since your old mucker Gordon Brown ...

JOHN PRESCOTT: Well I look at the reasons. I say that you know, what have we got now? Second term decade of a Labour government. Major economic problems as we had when we first came in.

And Gordon Brown made a lot of difficult decisions. Gave us the economic prosperity and social justice so people felt the Labour Party has got a head as well as a heart. In the second one it's still global problems. And when I look at it, they blame him for food prices, oil prices. God it's gone from about fifteen dollars is it, getting on for a hundred and fifty dollars.

That will be a fundamental change coming from outside globally. Yet people want to blame Brown for it. He loses the DVDs or whatever, the records. Blame Brown for it. And these have been unfortunate. The 10p obviously had an effect as Gordon himself has said.

ANDREW MARR: Which, which was an odd mistake. Because what, quite clearly what's happening, all the pollsters are saying, it's the white working classes who are haemorrhaging away from Labour at the moment.

JOHN PRESCOTT: Well I think the Crewe election ..

ANDREW MARR: People used ...

JOHN PRESCOTT: .. and the local elections were a kick up our backside. No doubt about that. Can't, don't try and lessen it. It was an important lesson to us. They're not happy which way we're going at the moment. They're not sure of what we're going. They like our record - three elections, four. And I believe he should continue doing that. And Gordon Brown will. He was the architect of all that.

ANDREW MARR: You don't, you don't think he should step aside?

JOHN PRESCOTT: No I don't. Not for one moment. It's nonsense. When I hear some of these people saying leaders are meeting and there's a new leadership it's always un-attributable sources. Have you ever noticed?

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

JOHN PRESCOTT: It's a senior cabinet member. They never talk to the junior cabinet members.

ANDREW MARR: But it's almost always happening. I mean everyone at the time says "Oh this is all got up by the press". Then you read the memoirs afterwards and it wasn't got up. There's always things going on.

JOHN PRESCOTT: Yeah but the point is, is it the fundamental breakdown we're talking about? Are people going around wanting to replace Brown? If you looked at the mechanics of the replacement - and I know from mem.., one member, one vote, that in fact you've got to go through a process.

That will be deadly for us. But Gordon Brown's the best man to deal with the economy stupid. Basically he knows what needs to be done. It is still the economy. And when I hear he doesn't smile. Well they used to talk about me not smiling "miserable beggar". Perhaps I did look a bit like that. I can't alter my face but I see with Gordon.

But I tell you what, when you get on an aeroplane, you go and look in the cockpit, see if the pilot's smiling? Or you just hope there's a pilot there going to guide the plane, fly the plane and land successfully.

ANDREW MARR: And yet, as things are at the moment the plane is going to plummet. I mean the Labour plane not the national plane.

JOHN PRESCOTT: I don't think ...

ANDREW MARR: You're heading for a terrible smash.

JOHN PRESCOTT: No it's in bumpy weather. Course it's in bumpy weather. But you know I was in the seventies and eighties when we had majorities of nothing and four, and we still had that fight.

ANDREW MARR: Yeah but then ..

JOHN PRESCOTT: The Tories win a by-election for the first time in thirty years against Labour and some of our people running around saying well look, should have another leader, make change. We are in a real fight now.

We need to take on the Tories. And I hope the parties and members of parliament will get together and address themselves to that fight. When I hear some of them saying why don't they go ...

ANDREW MARR: Don't you think the country's just had enough of, of Labour?

JOHN PRESCOTT: No. When I was a Deputy Prime Minister under Tony I was talking to these guys "Well get rid of Blair". It's the same guys now want to get rid of Brown. And I see Graham Stringer on the telly there. One day it's "Get rid of Blair". Now it's "Get rid of Brown".

And when he was the leader of Manchester half the councillors wanted to get rid of him. It's called leadership. It's called bumpy rides. Get on with what we're doing. Social justice. Economic prosperity. There's not been a better chancellor than this man. And he's more needed internationally and nationally to deal with the global problems.

ANDREW MARR: Yeah. Do you think one of the problems - cos there clearly have been problems with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister - is that he's simply trying to do too much? I mean he's always been a workaholic. He's always wanted to be obsessed by the detail.

JOHN PRESCOTT: I have said to him sometimes - cos he is a workaholic, there's no doubt - that he would say "Well so are you" and so. But Tony was always very careful about taking his holidays as well I know cos I had to work during the holidays. And I didn't necessarily get them. So you've got to get a proper balance on it. But this is a serious man.

This is a man who's made a major contribution to a decade of prosperity. That's the man I want at the helm. The man who knows what it is in the economy, has a proven record. And Mr Cameron? Well we have to wait what he's got to say. But he was there for Black Wednesday wasn't it? He took us out of that. Let's wait and see.

ANDREW MARR: But Labour people don't understand where the Party is going at the moment do they?

JOHN PRESCOTT: Well I hear them saying that. Obviously many of our Labour voters, if you took a Crewe, we can't ignore that, or even the local elections. I think the ten P created problems with them cos it seemed to project as if Labour wasn't concerned about the poor.

We take millions out of poverty, pensioners and children, we've got millions back to work. Can't say we're not concerned about social justice. But that image has got to be brought home to people that that's our policy.

ANDREW MARR: Would it help Gordon Brown - I mean he got rid of the job of Deputy Prime Minister. Perhaps ..

JOHN PRESCOTT: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: .. he could, he could do with one?

JOHN PRESCOTT: Well Gordon, every prime minister has to have somebody who's taking advice. I believe the Deputy Prime Minister role is an important role and I probably the longest serving one.

Because you need to do many things on behalf of the Prime Minister and keep the Party going. And do more in the p... in the Party itself. But you know ..

ANDREW MARR: And you advised him I think to have, have a First Secretary of State or something.

JOHN PRESCOTT: Well I always said that in fact you could have a First Secretary of State. Because Deputy Prime Minister's not the recognised role in government. The First Secretary title is. And I think therefore you always needed someone and it signals - but you do signal perhaps you're making a number two, which to a certain extent might be mor

I was going to run for the job anyway, so they could be both secure in knowing I'm not ambitious to take the job.

ANDREW MARR: Gordon phoned you up and says "John, one piece of advice". What's it going to be?

JOHN PRESCOTT: Stick to our values. Stick to our policies. But get it across to people we've got economic prosperity and social justice. You're the man that brought it. It's still a success. Get it across to the electorate again. Help us like hell out of these economic problems coming from a global problem. You're the best man for it.

ANDREW MARR: All right John Prescott, thank you very much indeed for joining us.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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