A triumph of passion over precision: remembering John Prescott’s powerful communication

"John Prescott" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by skuds

“People used to make fun of his speeches and his use of English language, but he was an incredibly direct communicator. And even if the syntax never quite made sense, the sentiment was very powerful.”

Tony Blair’s warm tribute to the late John Prescott – particularly this snippet from his interview on the Today programme – instantly transported me right back to my first job in journalism.

As a reporter at Inside Housing in the early 2000s, regular exposure to Prescott’s “powerful” communication came with the turf. The deputy prime minister made no secret of his disdain for the media (once yelling at me that my question was “stupid” at a packed press conference) but his straightforward and deeply held belief that everyone deserved to live in a “decent” home in a “sustainable community” was undeniable.

The reason the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister had responsibility for housing, planning and local government was because those were things Prescott cared deeply about. He may be famous for his two Jags and lamping the guy who threw an egg at him, but, as Gordon Brown pointed out, Prescott’s determination to bring all social housing up to a new “decent homes standard” was transformative for millions of people.

And so it was that I used to see Prescott on pretty much a weekly basis – visiting council estates, chatting with tenants, giving speeches and announcing plans. I saw first-hand how powerfully he connected and communicated with people, and how passionate he was about community, place and infrastructure. Once written down, his quotes rarely made sense (frustrating for a print journalist!), but, as Blair said, everyone knew what he meant. And most people believed he meant well. Even journalists.

I remember being in the kitchen of a Victorian house in Manchester, where the chair of the residents’ association was nervously awaiting the DPM’s staged visit. After he’d gone, she and her neighbour told me with relief that he was “a really nice man” who had put them at ease while he talked to them about their new community garden. The feature I wrote is illustrated with a picture of the three of them outside together half an hour later – looking relaxed and laughing away at a joke one of them had made.

Twenty years ago, housing policy was a relatively niche pursuit, and housing journalism was certainly much lower profile than it is today. It’s only looking back that we can see the impact those policies had, and understand what it took to deliver them. Now, with housing very much at the top of the government’s agenda, and back in the hands of a deputy prime minister who says she, too, won’t let Hansard correct her working-class grammar, could straight talking transform homes, place and infrastructure once again?