Blair and Brown pay tribute to ‘working class hero’ at funeral of John Prescott
Blair and Brown pay tribute to ‘working class hero’ at funeral of John Prescott
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Former prime ministers Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have paid tribute to a “working class hero” who “rose to the highest ranks of the land” at the funeral of Lord John Prescott. Senior figures from past and current Labour governments gathered at Hull Minster on Thursday to remember the former deputy prime minister who died in November aged 86.
The funeral cortege included a Jaguar hearse and limousine, in a nod to Lord Prescott’s nickname “two Jags”, and Sir Tony and Mr Brown joked in their eulogies about the famous incident in the 2001 general election campaign when he punched a man who threw an egg at him.
Lord Prescott’s coffin was carried into the minster as former Downing Street director of communications Alastair Campbell played the Welsh national anthem on the bagpipes. Mr Brown paid tribute to Lord Prescott as a “working class hero” who “kept the show on the road during difficult times”.
Giving the first eulogy at the service, he said: “We will never see his like again. A man of the people he certainly was, in a class by himself, a one-off. One of a kind but one of us, in the best sense of the word. “Unique, remarkable, extraordinary. John Lennon would have called him a working class hero, and not least because he risked appearing on Gavin And Stacey, seen by millions, as Nessa’s rejected suitor.
“John was a man of the people because he could connect with people, and I don’t just mean that man in Rhyl who dared to hurl an egg at him. “John could connect with people who had not only encountered him in the media, but knew he was on their side.
