John Prescott RIP

[Zonder]

Whatever your political leaning, it's a sad day for politics. Sad to hear Gordon Brown just now on radio 4 describe him as a Colossus then to hear that he died in a care home with Alzheimer's. Hard to imagine.
Still remembered who people were to the end and kept his warmth and friendliness.

I find it interesting that even Priti Patel had kind words to say in a tribute. She went up in my estimation a tiny bit there.

Something that surprises me, looking back of the footage of the "punch" is just how much his attacker was on top of him, gripping him by the clothes and refusing to let go. It takes something like 8-10 people to prise him off of John Prescott.

This wasn't just an "egg and a punch" incident - I'm not sure if JP actually landed a punch at all. It is much more of a threatening attack on an MP (IMO). Especially in light of how politics has become since then.

These aren’t house rules. They are manners we all have because we are people. Nobody needs to have manners of course, and we have rules on MN to ensure that being abusive isn’t tolerated.

People are by convention gracious when someone has died. Politicians apply that rule to each other. Prescott does not seem to have been a man of great wickedness or an evil bent. He seems to have been motivated by some ideas of helping and improving matters.

People chipping at him are to be viewed as what they seem; ungracious, and in a few instances actively poisonous (ie the slur of earlier).

In the 60s we used to play croquet on the lawn at the Mechanics Institute guest house at Burley-in-Wharfedale - which was run for poorer working class families to have cheap holidays. Maybe he learnt it there.

Imagine coming onto a thread about someone who's just died to write that.

Did that make you feel good?

And mine. That was very gracious.

Read the room

You cannot legitimately tell a poster to ‘go away’.

Thank you for providing the details and confirming I had remembered it being a step son.

Too right I will judge people on here who condone violence.

@MrsSkylerWhite I love that!!

Very well said.

He was okay - it was his son that was an a hole!

Obituaries are frank in their assessment of our strengths, weaknesses, successes and failures as humans.

This thread reflects that.

Kemi Badenoch

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has also offered her "heartfelt condolences" on behalf of her party for the death of Lord Prescott.

"He was a titan of British politics in the 1990s. One of this country's greatest examples of social mobility and a true patriot," she says in the Commons.

Laughter could be heard across the room when she mentioned the "famous" 2001 egg punch: "Many of us, all across the country and the public, were very much on his side during that altercation".

Well put. They need to be ignored.

Funny how it was acceptable for lefties and socialists to pile on RIP threads re Margaret Thatcher when she died being incredibly nasty, yet apparently any kind of criticism isn't allowed when it's a leftie/socialist!

I struggle with this too.

Posters are told to ‘go away’, ‘stay off the thread’, and labelled ‘far right’ - as a pejorative, whilst others are encouraged to ‘ignore’ posters who’s views dont align with their own.

To a cynic, it would look like an attempt to stifle discussion….

Not at all but I have spent 30 years thinking and saying it so I am not going to pretend I thought he was great just because he died.

Blimey. First Patel, now Badenoch. Funny old day, eh?

According to wiki:

"Opinion polls showed the public, particularly the working class, supported Prescott's reaction to the egg throw; a Sky News Active television poll of 38,000 people found 61% in support."

Given Sky was rabidly right wing in those days, that's quite telling.

Indeed and they still do this years after her death.

Yep, as do the people trying desperately to derail the thread.

It's perfectly acceptable to say what you think of someone years after their death.
It's just incredibly bad form to come on a thread called RIP, when someone has recently died, and say these things.

Loved that appearance! It showed him as being normal and funny!

That time he hit the guy, well the other guy asked for it IMHO. He chucked a raw egg at JP ffs! That must've really hurt and I think he acted in self defence as an automatic response.

Have you read some elements from the obituaries?

They simply represent the facts relating to his life - without fear or favour.

Anything else would be akin to Stalinist revisionism.