Hello and welcome to Politics at Jack and Sam's Daily, the podcast where you get everything you need to know about the day ahead in British politics in under 20 minutes, now both back in the same time zone and the same corner of South East London.
I'm both shivering Sam. You might have warned me that Britain had turned into the ice planet Hoth while I was away for 48 hours. But, you know, looking forward to spending my day shivering in Port Kuller's house today. It is Thursday, November the 21st. My name is Jack Blanchard of Politico. With me, as you can hear Sam Coates of Sky News. The Prime Minister is back in the country from the America, Sam. And so am I and delighted to be here. But it is a tricky moment today. We stand on the brink of uncertainty. British missiles yesterday landed in Russia.
We've had the rhetoric from the Kremlin in response, but we haven't found out what they're going to do about it yet. We'll get into that a little bit later. Before we do, Sam, we need to talk about the big story that's hanging over Westminster this morning. A sad story hanging over Westminster this morning. It's been announced
In the last hours, we record this that one of the titans of British politics, the last four decades, John Prescott, has died at the age of 86. John Prescott was Britain's longest-ever holder of the title of Deputy Prime Minister. He was one of the biggest figures of the new labour era, seen as the conscience of new labour, and at times, its life and soul as well.
A bear-like figure with a trademark suspicious scowl. That's the verdict of the times of victory that's just dropped. But he was so much more than that beloved of the whole labor movement. Above all else, actually, I think, Jack. For that sense that he had that he was always loyal to the party. Now, in the last hour, his wife Pauline and his sons Jonathan and David have released a statement. They say that John Prescott died surrounded by the love of his family and the jazz music of Marion Montgomery.
They went on, 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.
Or, kind of as I like to think of it, turning his own phrase back on himself. John Prescott was the ultimate representative in politics of traditional values in the modern setting. Hey, so work at the Yorkshire Post back in the day. John Prescott was such a big figure in Yorkshire. He was the MP for Hull East for, what, 40 years? A huge figure on the scene up there. A huge figure in British politics for such a long time. He's sort of bowed out of public life over the last few years. His family this morning thanking the NHS doctors and nurses. He's been caring for him.
He had a stroke in 2019 and staff at a care home where he passed away after living with Alzheimer's for the last few years. He was quiet at the end, but he couldn't have been a noisier politician, a complex, passionate guy. Everyone, of course, remembers the time he punched the protester who threw an egg at him in 2001 and defending him when he did that. Tony Blair just summed him up with the memorable line, Sam.
John is John, and there's a lot of people who will remember him in that way. The tributes are starting to flow, where you can see them all over my Twitter feed and in WhatsApp and all the rest of it. Led by Tony Blair, who of course appointed him as his deputy prime minister when he entered Paran 1997, and he's issued a statement simply to say he is devastated.
It is no exaggeration to say the Labour Party could never have won three consecutive full terms without John. He was a commanding president. He represented the wing of the party, which was not new Labour, but he did it in a way which never reduced the effectiveness of our appeal and indeed extended it, broadening the base of our support.
But also in Tony Blair's statement, there seemed to be a little message for today, a little read across to the present moment's more fractured politics. He says, John Prescott was liberal and tolerant, yet instantly intolerant of any overly liberal, middle-class dismissal of the misery suffered by poor inner-city communities.
And it took to this point, I want to start the sort of discussion about John Prescott. With that observation by Tony Blair, you know, John Prescott worked for large parts of the country because he was intolerant of overly liberal middle-class tendencies and instead was for working people.
It sounds like the sort of thing that Keir Starmer's labor party really needs. And that was what John Prescott stood for. And Tony Blair's sort of saying, that's what labor needs to. Yeah, he's like a sort of bulwark figure against labor becoming this sort of chattering class classes. As some people would say that this sort of is LinkedIn focused middle class party that labor has tendencies it can sometimes turn into and sort of walk away from its working class foundations. And John Prescott
is one as a sort of big figure who always fought against that and you can see echoes of that in certain other figures within the Labour Party today, Sam. I mean, Angela Vayner is the current Deputy Prime Minister and has been described as Kia Starmer's Prescott from time to time. It's a slightly lazy comparison in some ways, but you can see the parallels in having this very strong
fiercely intelligent working class figure who sort of pulled themselves up to this extraordinary position within the party and sees themselves as the conscience of the party, sees themselves as someone who used to speak out in a very, very straight talking way and can talk and connect with certain parts of the country in a way that the sort of grander or the richer end of the Labour Party, and I guess you'd have to include Tony Blair himself in that, might sometimes struggle to do.
In preparing for this podcast, I've been reading old books about new labour and the entries about John Prescott. And I read a section in Andrew Rundsley's seminal Servants of the People book.
about John Prescott and his entry into Downing Street in 1997. And that really brought home the comparisons actually with Angela Rayner and what I think Keir Starmer is trying to do with her in her current post. Let me just read you a small bit from that book. He said that the combination, this is coming into power in 1997 of new labour.
The combination of a public school lawyer, Tony Blair, and a secondary modern seaman, that was John Prescott, because of course he was in the name he started on the seas, had proved to be a surprisingly appealing blend of Islington guacamole and hull mushy peas with the electorate.
You can see the parallels there. Despite his posture of traditional labour against the modernisers, he privately scorned as nouveau labour, sometimes the project that Tony Blair embarked on. The deputy leader in the Vio Andrew Ronsley was always a pragmatist.
Though Prescott occasionally vented steam at what had been done to the Labour Party, Blair had always relied on the calculation that John wants to be in government. And that was borne out by Prescott's attractively childlike approach when he was on the steps of number 10, shouting, I've always wanted to do this.
Now I think that fundamental trust that the deputy always wants to be in power, in political office, in government office, is also at the foundation of Keir Starmer's trust in Angela Reyna, who already, both in opposition and now in government,
Strains at the edge and pushes at the boundaries of what Kistama wants to see. But it is that belief that she wants to be in the tent, not out of the tent as deputy leader of the Labour Party. That means that the relationship works. And that's the biggest peril, I think, between now and what we saw in 1997 and after.
It was always and is always still very clear listening to Tony Blair, how much he rated, loved, listened to, trusted John Prescott and relied on his council for all sorts of issues, especially ones related to Labour's more working-class communities.
I'm not sure that Keystone has got quite the same trust for Angela Raina, but maybe they'll grow it over the years in power. The other thing about John Prescott, of course, I was really a lovely interview he did in 2019, so only a few years ago.
In the Guardian after he turned 80 he said this and when you get to being 80 you're not scared of anything I've got four or five years to think about death and then he says rather ruefully when I do die after 50 years in politics all they'll show on the news is 60 seconds of me thumping a fella in Wales and that clip of course of job Prescott punching someone on the campaign trail went
I guess at the time it would have gone viral if such things are possible. It's still played to this day. Sam, you're old enough to have been a political journalist in 2001. Do you remember that amazing moment when that happened? I was working on the 2000 All Election campaign and it was kind of...
I was at the times at the time, I really just started and it was one of the first biggest stories that I ever helped cover. I was sitting in a tiny side office in the times with skier news on the wall and suddenly we caught a flash of something going on and we just sat there and using the old VHS recorder we winded back
and then watched it again, and watched it again, and watched it again, and paused it, and paused it, trying to work out eventually with news editors and lawyers whether we could say that the deputy prime minister had just punched somebody. There was no social media, we couldn't cut a corroborated. We were sitting there working out whether there had been contact, whether we were about to make a libelous allegation, whether or not actually, we thought it just happened had gone on. It was a farmer, funnily enough,
kind of quite smartly dressed farmer in North Wales in real, who'd thrown an egg at John Prescott, and he'd sort of spun around on his foot and gave him kind of a jam with his left hook. And that sort of, I do think, unfortunately for John Prescott, both affectionately and just probably against, but also against his will, it was the moment that summed up his
political career in some senses because he was a prognacious figure he was a former boxer and it was that fighting ability whilst doing it in the ring as it were that was beloved and of Tony Blair and so many others and the fact that he was out fighting for new labour
You had a politician, puncture member of the public. He suffered no legal consequences as a result and I don't think that there was any political hit whatsoever to the Labour Party in that election for that incident. Indeed Labour in 2001 got pretty much the same super majority that they got in 1997. So you can really not say that that moment cost Labour anything which
is incredible. I'm not sure that that would be the same outcome today, but that is sort of encapsulated a moment of politics that few will forget.
I think it had an echo of something that we've come to recognise more recently, Sam, which is that when politicians are truly authentic and are a genuine human and voters know that and see that, they can get away with all sorts of things that other politicians wouldn't. I think there was an interesting assumption that John Pescott's career might be over when that happened and as you say,
turned out voters just didn't really mind at all that it happened and I think that's because John Prescott had that thing he was very much himself he was very much a real authentic guy and people can see that and we see that today in all sorts of politicians who are seen as authentic they're able to act well outside the boundaries of what normal politicians can get away with.
And people think it's fine. And I think that moment was the first time we've seen that, but we've certainly seen various incidents along the years since they're in the same vein. Just since we've been talking, Keir Starmer has released a statement about John Prescott. John was a true giant in the labour movement. He was a staunch defender of working people in the proud trade unionist. During a decade as deputy prime minister, he was one of the key architects.
of a Labour government that transformed the lives of millions of people across the nation. So much of John's work set the path for those of us fortunate to follow for leading climate engagement. Gosh, kiss time is no wordsmith, is he? I think you could have reached for a bit more soy wing rhetoric. Anyway, we'll leave kiss time the statement there. The other read across or similarity is that the department, the super department that Tony Blair
created for John Prescott, included much of the bits that are Angela Reyna's empire today. It's councils, communities, planning and all of that. And I think if there was a criticism of John Prescott, it was that in that super department, which also in those days included transport molded into it,
It's that the governing bit proved quite hard and that as a deputy, he might have been given too much power, too many controls of too many levers to end up effectively changing and improving the sort of structures of government and reforming. And in the end, Tony Blair took the difficult decision to split up his department, leaving John Prescott with less to do. And the final few years of his time in government were a bit more turbulent.
the kind of main thing that I covered over with John Prescott was a difficult incident where he accepted hospitality at the behest of a casino mogul just at the point where New Labour was considering expanding into allowing super casinos to expand into the UK.
But I think the role of the deputy prime minister in a Labour government seems to me to me primarily political. I don't think John Prescott Stamp was in terms of his departmental achievements. And I think it'll be interesting to see whether Angela Rayner can sort of do it differently, perhaps do it better, because there are echoes there as well.
No, of course, it should say John Prescott did play a crucial role in negotiating the all-important Kyoto climate summit in 1997, which still remains important to this day. We've only got a few minutes left. We'd better talk about the day ahead in British politics beyond the death of John Prescott. Almost every single newspaper this morning splashes on the news that British-built storm shadow missiles
landed in Russia yesterday for the first time. The telegraph, the FT, the Daily Mail, the Times Express, the I, the Guardian, even the Daily Star are all splashing that story. Even though nobody has very many details about it, Downing Street is still not officially confirmed that this has happened, although plenty of papers citing sources. And indeed, I can see sources in America confirming it too. Number 10 doesn't want to talk about this, Sam, which is interesting in itself. We've got John Healy, the defense
secretary is up before MPs on the defence select committee this morning, so lots of people will be tuning into that in Westminster today to see if he's prepared to talk about it anymore. I suspect not given the absolute wall of silence we've been met with so far, unless you tell me have your sources been there any more forthcoming than the number 10 were on the plane back from Rio yesterday?
No, I think the journalists on the plane are getting frustrated with... Apparently, the number 10 team changed their phones to sort of burn their phones as you often do when you go abroad and got back and nobody really contacted them and nobody really noticed because number 10 at the moment on these trips is saying almost nothing to the journalists on the plane. I think there's quite a lot of friction about how little number 10 are saying at the moment.
But look, the strategy of the government, as well as them, is not to confirm these strikes officially. In order, get this jack to avoid escalating tensions. OK, so there are photographs showing fragments of metal with the word storm shadow, stenciled on the side of them, being circulated across Russia by military bloggers, who claimed that they were found by residents in the village of Merino.
But the common strategy is not to escalate. But there seems no doubt that 12 of the long-range missiles were fired into Kursk, the Russian town in the borderland at about three o'clock local time on Wednesday. Meaning that everyone's asking the question, how does the Kremlin respond?
Now this week the Kremlin on Tuesday lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and quite frankly that is frightening and everyone is evaluating but at the moment everybody I talked to is downplaying the chance of that being a response. Perhaps more likely
It's a horrible term, but it's called hybrid warfare. It might be a more likely response. This is stuff like Russia, Russian or Russian-backed cyber attacks on critical infrastructure or sabotage. You have seen those incidents of Russian assassinations over scenes.
in the last few years, that kind of seems to be part of Russia's repertoire, also using Iran as a proxy to carry out attacks and destabilize. It wasn't long ago that Ken McCullum, the head of MI5, said that Russia's intelligence agency, known as the GRU, was intent on causing sustained mayhem on British and European streets. And you've got to question whether or not that has become after three o'clock yesterday, Russian times slightly more likely.
An interesting story on Reuters last night citing five sources with knowledge of Kremlin thinking, talking about the sort of peace deal that we might see next year once Donald Trump comes to power. They're reporting that Vladimir Putin is open to discussing a ceasefire deal with Trump.
but rules out making any major territorial concessions on what he's already held and insisting that he must abandon its ambitions to join NATO. You can sort of see the parameters of the sort of deal that we might start to get next year once Donald Trump comes in and assume that he does follow through on what he's saying he's going to do, which is essentially go straight to the negotiating table and bring the war to a swift end one way or another, quite how acceptable that would be.
to people in Ukraine, to Zelensky, to the Western European nations that have been fighting so hard in this battle for the last couple of years remains to be seen, but you can sort of see the carve-up that might likely to happen now that Donald Trump is headed back to the White House. It feels like between now and the next time we talk on Monday morning that quite a lot might have happened.
and we will know more about the direction of global affairs and of just where the conflict is going over the weekend and ahead of Monday. So it's a big weekend. We're going to be watching hard and we'll be back with you on Monday morning. Our 20 minutes is now up.
there's the alarm, and we look forward to seeing you next week. Indeed, let me just do a quick plug, because I made Politico's Westminster Insider podcast as well, Sam. It's coming out on Friday, and I've been looking inside the Downing Street spin machine. I've interviewed multiple former directors of communications in Downing Street and former Prime Minister's official spokesperson to talk about what it's like to spin stories to people like you, Sam Coates, all your favourite people on one podcast, something for you to look forward to over the weekend.
I have to say, I am picking up people right in the centre of government, including in number 10, who are trying to shake up number 10's communication operations. So keep a close eye. That podcast might be incredibly timely. There you go. All right. Have a wicked weekend, sir. I'll see you on Monday. See you then. Bye-bye.
