My weekend away with John Prescott

By Mark Hanson / @MarkHanson

I spent half the bank holiday weekend in the back of John Prescott’s ‘battle mini-bus‘, touring the North of England, pitching up in city centres and actually meeting real voters face-to-face – a revolutionary idea that could really catch on!

When we discuss the problems of getting our message out, we’re really coming to terms with the fact that too many of our spokespeople just don’t sound like the average person in the street. There is a perception among voters that politicians are too far removed from real life and don’t understand or empathise with the matters that are of greatest concern: we’re better than the Tories but there’s still a long way to go…

The Prescott Express Battle Bus travelled 1,000 miles, visiting 12 towns and cities in four days, campaigning for Labour in the European and County Elections. The funding for the tour, in true grassroots fashion, was raised from small online donations. The smallest was £5 with the largest being £500 from Tribune Magazine – that paid for the public address system.

The GoFourth tour was really powerful: we spoke directly to the voter, without the filter of our Westminster-focused media. It meant that voters could see the whites of our eyes and tell us what really matters, with us then able to talk to them in real language about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Prescott is the master of being able to engage with (i.e. talk to!) anyone. He’s the type of bloke you could imagine yourself having a pint with.

And he really had an impact – Check out some of the videos:

We should be using this experience and learning from it. We keep accusing the media of being obsessed by the Westminster bubble, but we’re feeding it. Last weekend’s headlines were yet another example – various Labour heavyweights gave their views about Gordon and the current direction, and a host of other unattributed sources made other mischief.

Prescott met over 2,500 people this weekend but he’s only one man.

Why can’t we reinvent ourselves as the People’s Party when it comes to communicating? Yes to the GMTV sofa, yes to YouTube, yes to regional cabinet meetings but Yes also to getting our top people out of Westminster, onto the street corner and actually talking to real people. There were three spare seats on Prescott’s bus this weekend – one for Hazel, one for Stephen and one for Charles…