Sketch: Post-pugnacious Prescott embraces the flunkery
Numbering high on the list of Sights We Thought We’d Never See, John Prescott’s entry into the Lords was a surprising affair in more ways than one.
How utterly improbable. A few years ago we would have placed rather long odds on this happy occasion. Surely it was less likely than the party political funding dispute being resolved, or the number of women MPs outnumbering the number of men, or Sir Menzies Campbell taking up tap-dancing.
All that “flunkery and titles”, as Two Jabs once famously put it, was not for him. He told the Mail two years ago that he was utterly uninterested in being “sidelined” by being shunted into the upper House.
And yet the 72-year-old, apparently under pressure from his wife Pauline, has finally relented. He is now a peer of the realm, Baron Prescott of Kingston-upon-Hull, and in A1 position to enjoy “all the rights, privileges, pre-eminences” and the like which being a baron confers. The mind boggles.
Pauline was looking delightful prior to the big occasion. Situated in the Peers’ Lobby, the area outside the entrance to the Lords chamber specifically designed for milling around in, she was the (admittedly ageing) Beau of the Ball. She was adorned with a pearl necklace and utterly enormous earrings. Her white suit jacket and skirt finally gave a literal interpretation to Tony Blair’s “whiter than white” promise. But it was the hat which really made her stand out, a black creation straight from Ascot. It was not over-extravagant. This was a working-class occasion, of course.
After the supporting acts of Quentin Davies (small hear-hear) and Angela Smith (medium-sized hear-hear) came the big man himself. For the third time that day the Black Rod stand-in marched in, followed by Man In A Technicolor Regal Dreamcoat and the two ermine-wearing moral-supporters, Milords Dixon and Grocott.
Between them was a rather sad-looking figure, draped in the red cloth ermine. It was he. Prescott was being flunked.
He shuffled forwards, at first sight rather grumpily. But when he turned to read his oath of allegiance the voice which came out was a million miles from the Prescott we know and – well, write about. “I, John, Lord Prescott…” The voice was meek, as if he was a five-year-old child who had just been sternly rebuked. He signed his name with awkward ponderousness. He looked old.
Some politicians carry this process off wonderfully. Only last night in Downing Street, fellow hacks were observing how easily the present prime minister excels at small talk and greasing the social wheels. Not so Gordon Brown, who used to mutter about the weather. And not so Prescott, who has been far more comfortable dealing with the baser instincts of downing pints of beer.
Could he not have rustled together even some of the preposterous dignity of Jack Straw, who as lord chancellor was frequently required to don absurd costumes and wave hats around? Perhaps it would have been an even worse betrayal if Prescott had done so.
Instead he seemed under the cosh. His was the attitude of a reluctant bridgegroom being forced to go through the awfulness of such public humiliation.
Yet the fact he did so showed a strange sort of defiance, in its own way. Peers looking on seemed utterly unmoved, although one Tory could be spotted grinning to himself in a corner. They waited silently to see if the reading clerk could be on the end of a swift left-hook. Instead all he got was a half-smile, half-scowl of appreciation.
Apart from that, though, Prescott was utterly impassive. His bow was by any standards pitiful. It wasn’t clear what he had done to deserve the biggest hear-hear of all, which came when he shook the Lord Speaker’s hand; one Labour peer even clapped ecstatically a couple of times. Perhaps they were taking more into consideration than the state of the new peer’s expression.
But Lord Prescott wasn’t hanging around. When it came to the traditional greeting from the leader of the upper House, the Conservative Lord Strathclyde, there was only the briefest, the politest of exchanges. Time to face the brave new world of the sidelines, embraced by the delighted approval of Pauline.
