Prescott slams Labour’s campaign

John Prescott, former deputy prime minister, has attacked Labour’s campaign for being a “presidential-type election based on computers, charts, focus groups and even the American language.”

Writing in the Sunday Mirror, Prescott has said that one of the key failures of Labour’s campaign was that they didn’t to defend their “economic record” and “didn’t defend the past.”

He also critiqued Labour’s housing policy, saying that it wasn’t a big enough part of their election campaign and that they should have promoted “rent to own’ mortgages… where you buy a home in instalments without a deposit.”

Prescott’s attack didn’t end there, he went on to say Labour should have highlighted their work on “the environment and seeking a deal on climate change” before saying Labour became “too close to the Tories and the Lib Dems in the Better Together campaign.”

The former MP for Hull East also pointed out what he thinks Labour needs to do now. Prescott said that Labour must appeal to “people’s aspirations” and he noted “We won in the past because Labour put its traditional values in a modern setting. It’s time we did that again. We need not New Labour or Old Labour, but Now Labour.”