John Prescott lazy? Pull the other one!

By Alastair Campbell

It’s obviously becoming stand-up-for-oldies week. Yesterday David Frost on his 70th birthday. Today another veteran into his eighth decade on the planet in the form of John Prescott.

John is of course perfectly good at standing up for himself, as anyone who followed 2001 election visits to North Wales will remember. But in an era when politicians tend to get coverage for all the wrong things, I thought the story in The Sun yesterday naming John as Britain’s laziest MP was a particularly bad example.

At his age, and having stepped down from his position as Deputy Prime Minister when Tony Blair resigned, I think most people would consider him entitled to take it a bit easier. But from what I can tell he hasn’t. People can have all sorts of differences of opinion over policy, beliefs and modus operandi (it’s Latin, John) not to mention in John’s case his ability to mangle the English language, and there are those who will never get beyond ‘two Jags’ and an affair.

But there are two things you have to say about JP – no matter how he expresses it, you always know what he means. And you cannot question his workrate. MPs are Parliamentarians and how often they speak in Parliament is one of many indicators to measure workrate. But it is a bit much to make it the only one.

JP campaigns as hard and as effectively as MPs half his age. The way he has established himself as a new and strong left-of-centre voice on the internet is evidence of his continuing strength as a politician and communicator.

Whether campaigning against bankers’ bonuses, or for the Labour Party via Go Fourth, he puts enormous energy into this new approach, alongside all the miles and the meetings of the old-style. He has even, despite years baiting me about my obsession with Burnley, got into sport, as a rugby league club director and as the author of a sports strategy for his own area.

On the foreign side of things, he works a weekend a month in the Council of Europe, investigated the Armenian presidential elections and, as one of the drivers of the Kyoto Agreement, continues to plug in to policy debates on the environment.

He has never had a second paid job, and any time I see Pauline she says he still won’t take weekends off because there’s always work to be done. Does any or all of that make him as busy as he was as DPM? No. But Britain’s laziest MP? I don’t think so.

I have a hunch the story was fed out by the Tory whips to undermine and embarrass him because having shown he can still mix it politically over bankers’ bonuses, now he has turned his fire on Tory MEP Daniel Hannan. Hannan got himself and his party a fair bit of attention for laying into GB at the European Parliament.

Now he is attracting attention David Cameron would rather not have for an interview he gave in the States attacking the NHS the Tories claim to believe in. JP has been leading the charge to get Cameron to say or do something about Hannan. I suspect the label of laziest MP will merely fire him up even more.