Tony Blair said this morning that he felt “devastated” by the death of John Prescott, his deputy when he was prime minister. And no wonder. Prescott was, he observed, the “yin to his yang”, or possibly the other way round, someone from a less privileged background from him, a different aspect of the Labour Party. And that’s precisely why his death feels like the demise of real Old Labour, the working class part of it.
