Exasperation poured out as a torrent from a sewer
LABOUR unity took another magnificent step yesterday morning when Lord Prescott descended from Mount Olympus to proffer advice to the party in its malodorous leadership election. ‘Calm down!’ screamed his lordship with the composure of a man whose pyjama bottoms had just caught fire. Speaking to John Humphrys on Radio 4, he was frequently so animated that he became breathless. Exasperation poured out of him as a torrent from a ruptured sewage mains. I wondered if the interview was being played at the wrong speed, so agitato, allegro, picante-furioso was the pace.
After complaining that there had been far too much ‘abuse’ in the leadership election, former Deputy Prime Minister Prescott dispensed considerable verbal violence himself.
Tony Blair’s speech criticising Left-winger Jeremy Corbyn had been ‘staggering’, fumed Prezza. ‘Totally unacceptable!’ said this giant of morals.
‘Stop this abuse!’ continued the man who once biffed a voter.
Had his former Cabinet colleague Dame Margaret Beckett been fairly called a ‘moron’ by ex-Labour spin doctor John McTernan for signing Mr Corbyn’s nomination papers? Dame Margaret, you see, was not a supporter of Mr Corbyn but felt, as did Lord Prescott, that it would help the party to have a full ‘debate’.
Whoompf! At the name of arch-Blairite McTernan, Lord Prescott ignited like a brandied plum pudding.
‘Ooo the ’eck is John McTernan?’ he raged, elongating the ‘e’ of McTernan to lard it with disdain.
‘He advised in Scotland and we lost. He advised in Australia and we lost. He has no authority. Morons! Stop the abuse!’
From time to time interviewer Humphrys would look in on the conversation, just to ensure that everything was going to plan, but really the Today programme maestro had little more to do than a farmer who drops his terrier into a pit of rodents.
Lord Prescott needed no encouragement to cause destruction and chaos. He is genetically incapable of anything else. Harriet Harman fell into his ambit. Grrrr! Gnnnnash! ‘Silly!’ said Lord Prescott with the sort of ‘pah!’ tone a chauvinist will often use when asked what he thinks about some woman who happens to have been placed in authority.
Miss Harman, the party’s acting leader since May, had ‘got it wrong’ when she tried to stop Labour MPs opposing the welfare reforms that are popular with the electorate. ‘She didn’t have authority to do it,’ snapped Lord Prescott.
Mr Blair’s speech had ‘shocked’ the dainty Prescott. He didn’t like to see politics get like that. The other leadership candidates should keep their ‘abusive’ aides under control. The BBC suffered a minor flesh wound for publicising the off-the-record briefings of such creatures. Other media outlets sustained their customary beating.
Splat! The leadership contenders apart from Mr Corbyn took one in the eye for failing to talk about their policies. Kerplunk! Liz Kendall, most right-wing of the leadership candidates, was not to Lord Prescott’s refined palate, either.
He promptly forgot her name, chuckled about that in a way that suggested she was entirely unmemorable.
HE then crowed that ‘I don’t think the party likes her message’. Gender balance was so greatly cherished by Lord Prescott that he said he did not mind if there were ‘two men or two women’ as leader and deputy leader. Opinion pollsters who found Mr Corbyn to be ahead at present were naturally declared to know nothing.
For all I know, Mr Humphrys may by now have been filing his fingernails or attending to his correspondence. The Prescott rant was unstoppable, the usual elisions and oxygen-starved mispronunciations occurring.
When he is in this sort of mood, whole syllables fall off his sentences like an exhaust pipe flying off a second-hand Datsun Cherry.
And then my favourite moment of all: the leadership candidates should ‘speak to the people in a language they understand’.
This from a man who manages to make the Rev Spooner and Inspector Clouseau sound like Kenneth Branagh. My goodness, politics is fun at the moment.