Hit where it hurts: John Prescott
will be furious at criticisms
Photograph: Chris Ison/PA
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown ganged up and got the Sun to hit John Prescott where it hurts today. The deputy PM appears on the front page wearing a dunce's cap as his bosses make it clear what they think of his opposition to trust schools.
The caricature will be particularly hurtful to Prescott, who failed his 11-plus and is highly sensitive to criticism about his supposed educational defects. He will also be furious that he has become a casualty of Tony and Gordon's latest show of unity ("Tony Blair and I are working on this together," the chancellor told the Sun today).
It is not the first time - although Gordon hopes it will be the last - that the chancellor has stepped in to rescue the PM when he looks in difficulty. He did the same thing over tuition fees, foundation hospitals and Iraq, quietly letting it be known that he had budgeted for the war.
His strategy is generally to wait a while, allowing leftwingers in the Labour party to run down the policy in question. Then he steps in magnanimously, citing the need for reform and making it clear that Blair still needs his support in order to push through legislation.
Most recently, the chancellor has been irked by David Cameron's portrayal of him as a "roadblock to reform". Today's Sun has him putting his considerable bulk behind a policy the Tories support: "I will help Tony crush the school bill rebels."
Tom Bower, Brown's biographer, has no doubt that the chancellor privately opposes selection in schools. But he also knows that Blair will never quit voluntarily until he feels his reforms are irreversible.
"Brown needs to constantly reassure Blair that his legacy is safe," he says. "It is a radically contradictory strategy but it is working in that it cuts off any potential rivals for the leadership."
In the meantime, the deputy PM is politically expendable: "I think Gordon Brown is as tired of Prescott as everyone else. Prescott wants to make himself invaluable to the successor. But Brown doesn't need him."
It is a sign of just how little Westminster rates John Prescott that today's scolding has not prompted anyone to ask why the PM allows a man of whom he has such a low opinion to deputise for him.
Brown's 10th-hour concessions also make it psychologically easier for his supporters to toe the party line. If their man is prepared to wait a little longer for the sake of party unity, they can too.
In any case, despite the strong feelings over the school reforms, most Labour MPs are not yet ready to replace Blair. The PM's next real test may not be the schools bill, but the local election results in May, when the scale of the threat posed by David Cameron's Conservatives becomes apparent.
