Prescott - not just the Keeper of the Cloth Cap

Political cartoonists have their own conventions for depicting their subjects. I first noticed this in the 1960s. At one Labour conference in the early Harold Wilson period I was sitting in the front row next to a leading practitioner, a friend, who was sketching the great figures displayed before our wondering eyes. Why, I asked him, did he persistently distort their relative heights? Why, in particular, did he portray George Brown as being not only taller than Wilson but taller than Roy Jenkins, who was bigger than both of them?

The answer was that the public saw Brown as a rough trade unionist, Wilson as a small man and Jenkins as an effete intellectual with a fancy way of speech. In fact Brown was a delicate little man who sounded like a pantomime dame when he was in an excited condition, as he often was. No matter. The cartoonist drew what the public imagined their politicians to be rather than what they really were.

Mr John Prescott has long been depicted in the same way as Brown, as a big bruiser matching Mr Tony Blair. As with Brown, the relative heights are distorted. There is even a certain resemblance in their careers, for while Brown began his service to the Movement as a fur salesman at John Lewis, Mr Prescott began his as a purser on opulent liners, on one occasion, indeed, serving Anthony Eden after he had ceased being prime minister.

Mr Prescott rose in the seamen's union and was one of those "politically motivated men" whom Wilson denounced during the seamen's strike of 1966. This was hardly Wilson's finest hour, not only because he had used the security services improperly but because it was his rather than the union's intransigence which brought about the run on sterling and the consequential "July Measures". Mr Prescott emerged from the episode smelling sweeter than Wilson did.

It was in the 1980s, however, when Mr Prescott began to become a person of consequence in the People's Party. In 1988 he unsuccessfully contested the deputy leadership against Lord Hattersley. In 1992 he lost to Mrs Margaret Beckett in a contest for the same post. In 1994 he came second to Mr Blair in the election for leader, pushing Mrs Beckett into third place, and defeated her for the post of deputy.

In 1993, when John Smith was leader, Mr Prescott made his crucial intervention at the Brighton conference in favour of what has come to be known as one member, one vote. I write "come to be known" because the change that was in fact made did not honestly live up to its billing. The electoral college for choosing the leader continued, but with different ratios: a third each for parliamentarians, trade unionists and individual members. But the union members voted as individuals and not in blocks. The block vote was abolished, though it remained in attenuated form for the party conference. It was revived, putting in an appearance like Marley's Ghost, when Mr Blair wanted Mr Rhodri Morgan to be prevented from becoming the first leader of the Welsh Assembly.

Mr Blair was elected under this new franchise in 1994, though from the figures he would have defeated both Mrs Beckett and Mr Prescott under any system. Even so, Mr Blair owes him a certain debt of gratitude. Mrs Beckett, by contrast, was opposed to Smith's reforms, even though she was his deputy, and did everything to impede them.

It was not only in matters of internal party democracy that Mr Prescott was an early moderniser. It is not his fault if the version of democracy currently favoured by the modernisers is of the East European, guided variety. He is too easily categorised as Keeper of the Cloth Cap. He is a man of parts, even if some of them are missing.

He has certainly thought harder than most members of the Cabinet about public ownership. He favoured joint enterprises in public and private finance well before the Conservatives embraced the idea. He wanted to give public corporations the power to raise money in the market well before the fashion for privatising them or turning them into public limited companies with the Government holding a 100 per cent share - the course now being followed over the Post Office.

How long will that last, I wonder, before the shares are sold off, either in whole or in part? The Treasury, some of us are old enough to remember, once held a controlling interest in British Petroleum. That was sold under the supervision of Mr Tony Benn, which may or may not surprise you.

Mr Prescott, however, was interested not only in the financial structure of public enterprise but in the real structure of public transport - in the way the business worked, literally, on the ground. Yet the presence in the Cabinet of this knowledgeable enthusiast does not seem to have made much difference to our transport system. As Alfred Austin, the poet laureate of his day, wrote of the sick Prince of Wales, it is no better, it is much the same. Indeed, it may be rather worse than it was in May 1997.

To make a difference, Mr Prescott would have had to reverse many of the changes which successive Conservative Ministers of Transport made in 1979-97. But as Evelyn Waugh once complained of the Conservative Party, he has not put the clock back a single second. At the election the Liberal Democrats were the only party promising to renationalise the railways. Perhaps they made this promise because there was no danger of their ever being held to account for it. No doubt it would be a most expensive exercise, though I do not see why the shareholders should not be compensated in Treasury stock, as were the previous shareholders in coal, gas, electricity and the rest in the national- isation measures of 1945-51.

But I suspect it is not the cost which turns Mr Blair's face an even paler shade of grey and causes him visibly to shudder. It is the effect which he thinks any such proposal will have on the editor of the Daily Mail. Here Mr Blair may have got things slightly wrong. People may not want to revive British Rail - though there is a clear case for the re- establishment of the London Passenger Transport Board. But there is no case whatever for persisting with the railway system which was bequeathed to Mr Blair and Mr Prescott by the Conservatives. It is what the Roman lawyers call a damnosa hereditas.

There are at least four ways of getting to Gatwick Airport from London, all with their different prices, terms and conditions. To travel from one part of the country to another by rail at the lowest cost requires the combined talents of a City accountant, a Chancery lawyer and a Cambridge mathematician. All Mr Prescott seems able to offer is generalised abuse and the threat of fines. As Lord Beaverbrook used to ask: "Who's in charge of the clattering train?"

It is clearly not Mr Prescott or anyone else who comes readily to mind. Partly this may be down to the parsimony of Mr Gordon Brown, as Mr Prescott's friends claim it is. My own view is that it stems more from the vanity of Mr Prescott, who insisted not only on being made Deputy Prime Minister (which was harmless enough) but on having a huge department as well. There is no reason why he should not run transport. But he cannot try to run everything else at the same time.