Prescott: Complacency could spell election disaster
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott today delivered a stark warning to the Labour conference that complacency could spell election disaster.
He used his closing speech in Brighton to urge delegates to fight for every vote, as well as calling for consensus in the party and challenging delegates to become the first generation of Labour people to refuse to tear themselves apart.
Mr Prescott warned that most people were talking as if the third term had already started. “They say it’s in the bag,” he said.
Recent polls had put all three main parties as level. Assuming victory therefore was not only “complacent”, but “dangerous”, “arrogant” and it was arguing over the spoils of victory whilst the battle was still on.
He told delegates: “You must fight for every vote” and recounted a meeting with former Prime Minister Harold Wilson when he was a “fresh-faced slim line candidate”. Mr Prescott asked Mr Wilson if he was worried about the forthcoming election, to which Mr Wilson responded: “I don’t think I’ll be altering my plans young man”. Yet next time he saw him he had lost the General Election and “Ted Heath the unelectable” became Prime Minister. The time after that “Margaret Thatcher the unelectable” became Prime Minister.
Citing talk of Michael Howard as unelectable, he said this time the party would work long, hard and together to prove them right that he was unelectable, but only after the election.
He told delegates not to rely on the television and radio for putting his message across, but to get out there and knock on doors and say this is what we have done and this is what we are going to do. “The politics of organisation is always as important as the politics of good ideas” he concluded.
