Off Message
The Times carried an amusing sketch of Lord John Prescott's adventures in sunny Rutherglen the other day which didn't seem to go down too well with the locals.
I loved the impression given by the piece which is while old Two Jags was definitely 'on the bus' he nevertheless managed to stray way off message, and not for the first time of course.
So I imagine the Yes campaign will be thinking 'Haste Ye Back' rather than "Feck Off''.
John Prescott blasts Cameron for ‘ripping families apart’
John Prescott campaigns in Rutherglen Mark Runnacles/Getty Images
By Mike Wade - The Times
John Prescott has punched a hole in Better Together’s united front to save the Union by demonising the Conservatives and arguing that David Cameron should not have come to Scotland to argue the case for a “no” in next week’s referendum.
Addressing a street meeting in Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire, Mr Prescott began his speech by holding up a copy of a newspaper headlined: “Cameron: don’t rip apart our UK family”. Mr Prescott told supporters that Conservatives has been “ripping apart families for generations.”
Asked whether the prime minister should have stayed away from Scotland, Mr Prescott said: “Yes. When I see The Daily Mail say ‘tearing our family apart’, the man, his party has been doing that all his bloody life. It’s what they do.”
Referring to Downing Street’s recent difficulties in raising a saltire above the prime minister’s house, he went on: “They have come up with an idea about fast legislation, whether it is right or not, and Gordon Brown has articulated that.
“The three parties have agreed and with Cameron up here, he wants to show he is for devolution – Christ he can’t even get the flag up. He want to say he’s for devolution, but I have to say, ‘That’s not been your history’. I tell you what, if he came into my constituency, into the northern areas, and said if I don’t win this vote I am going to go, it would be bloody powerful information.”
So often a talisman for Labour at by-election campaigns north of the border, Mr Prescott was unloaded from his party’s battlebus, apparently unaware that Scotland’s tectonic plates are shifting.
For much of the time, the speech he made outside a bank on Main Street was drowned out by rival “yes” and “no”” supporters, chanting like football fans. All part of the rough and tumble of the stump, said Mr Prescott, but perhaps the mood infected him.
He made a poor joke about England and Scotland uniting in football to defeat Germany, which he attempted to clarify later, though at one point he appeared to confuse Scotland with Germany.
He said: “I came in a bus, same as the German football team. I watched the German match, the Scots did very well, but they don’t win; England doesn’t win. With Better Together as a campaign slogan perhaps it would be better if we did. There is a serious question there isn’t there? About whether England, Wales and Germany should be treated as separate teams in Europe but I’m not making that proposal, I’m just saying I’m on the bus.”
To be clear, he stressed he was against a UK football team. “The national feeling is they wouldn’t want to,” he said. “I still want to shout for England even though we lose every bloody time.”
When voices were heard above the din, the most succinct lines came from hecklers: he was called “Duke of Cumberland”, “traitor” and, more tellingly perhaps, reminded of his proper title by one grey-haired campaigner, who simply yelled out: “Baron Prescott of Kingston upon Hull in the County of East Yorkshire.”
It’s too much of a mouthful for many in Rutherglen.
Foot 'N' Mouth (10 September 2014)
As I write this post John Prescott is on the TV speaking at a 'Better Together' rally in Rutherglen which is part of South Lanarkshire Council.
Now I have to say it would have been good to see this old Labour warhorse, now Lord John Prescott, in South Lanarkshire shire when the fight for equal pay was at its height.
But then again maybe he would just have thrown his weight behind the local Labour council or said nothing at all, like so many Scottish Labour MPs, about the huge pay differences between male and female council jobs.
As regular readers know, the former deputy prime minister has a well deserved reputation for mangling the English language and almost the first words spoken by Mr Prescott today involved a call for an all British football team, so that "England and Scotland" might come together and have a chance of beatings the Germans.
I imagine that Labour's 'minders' must have been pretty angry at this kind of stupid comment which just goes to show how out of touch the party is in what used to be one of Labour's heartlands.
Where the suggestion of an all British football team will go down like a lead balloon.
Yet seconds later 'Two Jags' Prescott had his foot in his mouth again with an attack on the Conservatives and Prime Minister David Cameron who are, of course, Labour's friends and allies in the Better Together campaign.
So seconds after getting off the Labour Party's 'battle bus' Lord John Prescott is badly off message which must please the Yes campaign no end.
