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“... few early gestures and is very hard to shift: Cherie’s wonky non-smile and crazed lust for cash, Prescott’s voter-punching and malapropisms. They can’t help but feel that such things shouldn’t be allowed entirely to sum them up. They want to get their own version out there. It’s understandable, and also explains the sudden lurches into over-intimacy ...”

“... the political elite. Blair’s fluency was sufficiently striking to make me wonder whether, when John Prescott eventually lumbered into view, he hadn’t been elevated against all the odds into high office simply in order to enhance his leader’s elocutionary merits by some desperate and close-to-home contrast. But the effect of Blair’s delivery when ...”

“... Labour’s transport spokespeople of the Crystal Clear Faction. Their leader was big bluff burly John Prescott, the man who doesn’t mince words. He told Labour’s Conference in 1993: ‘Let me make it crystal clear that any privatisation of the railway system that does take place will, on the arrival of a Labour Government, be quickly and effectively ...”

“... It doesn’t take much to make John Humphrys angry. On the basis of his most recent book, Lost for Words: The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language (Hodder, £7.99), it would seem that there isn’t much that makes him angrier than bad language. Not swearing – he likes swearing – but bad use of language ...”

“... in the race for Labour’s deputy leadership against the candidate supported by the Tribune Group, John Prescott? Right again. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. In The Candidate, the great American film about political compromise starring Robert Redford, a young welfare lawyer is persuaded against his instinct to go into politics to change the world. He starts ...”

“... members as there had been when Blair won the 1997 election, and nowhere near the million members John Prescott used to boast of as being the party’s achievable goal. People are leaving Labour in droves. To anyone outside the present administration the explanation is simple: New Labour lies, and is craven, and has failed. To senior party figures and ...”

“... for blokes of whom he approves. Bill Clinton is ‘a great guy’, as is the Taoiseach John Bruton. Andrew Smith is ‘a nice guy’, and so is Guy Verhofstadt; Andrew Adonis is ‘a thoroughly nice guy’. John Hutton is also ‘a thoroughly nice guy’, while the footmen at Balmoral are ‘very nice ...”

“... Bench spokesmen, there is some kind of scrutiny of government performance – as, for example, John Prescott has recently shown in transport, and Robin Cook in health. When both Front Benches are agreed on central issues, meaningful debate is difficult, bordering on the unachievable. Worse still, it may be difficult to get a debate at all. It was a ...”

“... that they can’t be solved? Proposing the reform of London’s local government in the Commons, John Prescott expressed Labour’s desire to make the city’s administration ‘more open, more accountable and more inclusive ... It is about modernising the government of the capital, and giving power to the people of London.’ The city does need to ...”

“... Like many others I have been puzzled by the reaction to John Smith’s death. It was reported as though it were at least that of a prime minister, and his funeral was, as the BBC noted, in effect a state funeral. The decision of both the BBC and ITV to double the ordinary length of their evening news broadcasts on the day of his death could be put down to the social democratish inclinations of the programmers, but the speed with which the coverage had to be assembled suggests that it was more instinctive ...”

“... one thought it odd that the real inner cabinet not only did not include the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, but comprised four spinners and only two responsible ministers. As Rawnsley points out, the curious thing about Blair is that, however much he wants to reject ideology, he is also endlessly eager to explain himself, to insist that there is a ...”

“... as the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR): in effect, the Ministry for John Prescott, whose amour-propre demands a duly sprawling apanage. Mullin goes to Fenwick’s at his wife’s insistence, and buys three new suits. Early in 2001 he moves to International Development, only to get the heave-ho after Labour’s election win ...”

“... squeamish about dispensing with such footling restrictions, left-of-centre figures such as Cook, John Prescott, Margaret Beckett and Chris Smith have been allowed to surround themselves with like-minded ministers. The man who has replaced the Blairite factotum Stephen Byers, for example, in charge of minimum wage and trade-union rights, is Ian McCartney ...”

“... her speeches were greeted with jeers and she was called a ‘stupid cow’ by Tony Marlow, one of John Major’s Maastricht rebels (there’s a video of this on YouTube: Marlow looks very pleased with himself, especially when he manages to repeat the remark after the Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, asks him whether he’d used ‘unparliamentary language’). When ...”

“... proof against their leader’s displeasure. With the exception of Gordon Brown, and possibly John Prescott, no member of the present cabinet has such standing. Ministers have no power bases within the party or the country and are largely unknown to the electorate. They owe their places in the cabinet almost entirely to their relationship with ...”