As told to Anoosh Chakelian.
I’ve attended a thousand PLP meetings. This must be the worst operation I’ve ever seen. It is more about personality politics than in the past.
The [last] Labour government was successful in most of the issues that we always thought was important to Labour: in the growth of the hospitals, the education system, the economy, people at work. All that was a successful record.
Not that it’s ever mentioned now. It was soured largely by Iraq. That period is almost obliterated by that. So you find present government, or even present leadership, in no way refers to that period of the Labour government. So the real problem is, if you’re disowning the most successful three periods of a Labour government, then you’re in some difficulty as to what you’re replacing it with.
It’s never happened before – it’s open war, civil war, inside the PLP. Some members in the PLP sit there with their social media, already typing out the fight going on to the mass of reporters who are amassed outside and told to come along and report because there’s going to be a big row. All that means we can’t really have unity. The division now is the attack on the leadership. A core who sit in the same places, make the same accusations against the leadership, right or wrong, every bloody week. They do it by a death of a thousand cuts – keep on making the same complaints.
I just think that the PLP is in civil war status. It’s not carrying out what it should do – that is, project Labour’s policies and be supportive of our people in the field.
All this criticism is about removing him. And then what adds to that is when Tom Watson comes along and joins in with this criticism. He’s entitled to do so, but he is the Deputy Leader, for God’s sake – quite different from the way I saw the role as defined; to support the party in a positive way, right. Get out and increase his membership, etc.
And the Leader, he’s faced with a really difficult position, because he was elected and had never been a minister before. My heart went out to him when he had to deal with PMQs. Even with my 50 years, I found it impossible and fell on my face a few times.
We have a shadow cabinet now – cor blimey, you can be in the shadow cabinet in 12 months! You do need to have a bit of experience. So that does affect it, without a doubt. Then you get people on one side who refuse to serve in the shadow cabinet criticising the shadow cabinet. If you join the shadow cabinet, you’re a traitor to one cause or the other.
It’s how you manage that division. The leadership is critical – for Jeremy to go out and do all of these things when he’s not been a minister is difficult. I think he’s been improving in doing the job. But frankly, it gets into people’s minds in a very short period of time, whether they think you’re the leader or not. And we do have a dilemma. It’s difficult for him – he’s reaching out a bit now, but almost the list has been drawn. I can’t see these people coming across now and uniting in the name of the party, supporting our people out in the elections. If you can’t unite the party, how the hell can you carry the country?
There are problems on the left and problems on the right, but we’ve always managed them – especially in the PLP. Robust arguments. But now it’s the battlefield, and all that comes out is a divided party.
I’m an old Labour man, right, I’m Labour to the core. To sit and watch it waste away its great reputation, what it’s done for our people in the country, and then when our people start stopping to vote for us, you’ve got to ask what’s bloody going wrong.
What Jeremy does is his decision. But he’s made clear he wants to stay. Now, if that stays the same, and the others stay the same, we’re going to have a stalemate divided Labour party – it’s disastrous.
So on the one hand, the PLP could try to be a little bit more supportive, and to recognise the party’s elected a leader, or they can go through the same process come June and call for another election, put it to the vote. They’re the options given to us by our party.
Our bloody country is decimated and we’re talking about the fucking sponsorship rules for the election of leader! I wish Momentum would go away, they’ve given us the same problems we had with Militant. I don’t think they’re as powerful as Militant, but they’re dedicated to the same cause. Their debate is how you change the Labour party.
By Christ, we can’t win like this! I’m an old-fashioned type, and I’m proud to have belonged to a team that did win three elections. There was no other leader who did that before. But I don’t put it down to leaders, I put it down to the nature of the party. We’re responsible, not the leaders.
John Prescott is a Labour peer and former deputy leader of the Labour Party.
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This article appears in the 29 Mar 2017 issue of the New Statesman, Wanted: an opposition