Soft-hearted John Prescott
Photograph: Chris Ison/PA
"I've done myself a bit of damage through my soft heart," John Prescott said yesterday. He never meant to criticise the PM's school reforms in public, oh no. What happened was that the journalist Susan Crosland, an old friend and the widow of the pioneer of comprehensive schooling Tony Crosland, had asked him for an interview, and he hadn't had the heart to refuse.
Admitting you have a soft heart is, of course, the kind of thing you can only do when the rest of you is boilerplate-hard. But there is some evidence that the deputy PM's left-hooking pragmatism does waver under the influence of feminine charm. In 1999, for example, he insisted on climbing into a Jag for the 270-yard journey along the Bournemouth seafront, "for security and because my wife does not like her hair blown about".
Mr Prescott also endorsed an initiative by the Women's Design Service this summer to make Britain's streets more "female-friendly". Fewer cobblestones, hairdriers in toilets, cropped hedges to deter lurking flashers and priority taxis for women after 10pm were all mooted - though many will remember his "silly girl" riposte to the ITN journalist Libby Wiener when she asked him about his housing arrangements.
Then there was the open-all-hours touch he brought to Downing Street last summer, inviting the Patel family on a tour of No 10 as they walked down Whitehall - not to mention his rescue of a white-water rafter who got into trouble during a trip to North Wales in 2004.
In fact, with his well-meaning, incomprehensible lurches around power, his weakness for the entreaties of women and his penchant for demolishing terraces, Mr Prescott is more than just soft-hearted: he is, in many respects, the King Kong of British politics. We may gawp at him now, but the 67-year-old beast will be missed.
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