John Prescott

John Prescott

John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott (born 31 May 1938) is a British politician who was the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. Born in Prestatyn, Wales, he represented Hull East as the Labour Member of Parliament from 1970 to 2010. In the 1994 leadership election, he stood for both Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, winning election to the latter office. He was appointed Deputy Prime Minister after Labour's victory in the 1997 election, with an expanded brief as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.

A former ship's steward and trade union activist, by the 1980s he was presented as the political link to the working class in a Labour Party increasingly led by modernising, middle-class professionals. In his youth, Prescott managed to overcome the handicap of failing his 11-plus entrance examination for grammar school, going on to graduate from Ruskin College in Oxford, and the University of Hull. Prescott also developed a reputation as a key conciliator in the often tense relationship between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

On 27 June 2007 he resigned as Deputy Prime Minister, coinciding with Blair's resignation as Prime Minister. Following an election within the Labour Party, he was replaced as Deputy Leader by Harriet Harman. Prescott retired as an MP at the 2010 election. On 8 July 2010, he entered the House of Lords as a life peer with the title "Baron Prescott, of Kingston upon Hull in the County of East Yorkshire"; he is now often referred to as Lord Prescott.

Prescott stood as the Labour candidate in the election to be the first Police and Crime Commissioner for Humberside Police, but lost to Conservative Matthew Grove.