Once again the Sunday Times, has cause to write about John Prescott, this time it's about his relationship with his son. According to the Sunday Times his son Jonathan Prescott, and his ''regeneration'' company Estate Partnerships may represent a potential conflict of interest, since this companies business is to win planning permission, and up until May 5th this year following that rather messy affair with a subordinate, Mr Prescott Senior's, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister was directly involved the decision-making process.
Regeneration is a big business, particularly here in Margate, and it is understood that monies have been forthcoming in the past as a result of decisions taken by John Prescott's Office and Seeda (South East of England Development Agency), fortunes can be made in property, so these are rather serious insinuations, let's just hope that everything in Thanets regeneration game is above-board.
John Prescott must be the most tenacious politician ever, I won't bore you with all the gaffes and innuendoes, but you have to admit he must have some balls and cheek not to have resigned on numerous occasions, I can only imagine that Tony Blair retains him as Deputy Dawg to make himself look good.
The history of John Prescott is indeed a long and very well documented one. He has a skill of not being sacked despite breaking the Ministerial Code and breaking basic rules of ethics. I think there are a couple of reasons why he hasnt gone yet:
ReplyDelete1) He represents the working class part of the Labour Party, the Left as it were. Hes needed to balance the more right wing Blair. This might become apparent when the issue of Trident's replacement comes up in Parliament later this year...
2) Hes been a loyal ally of Blair's and Blair doesnt want him to go, perhaps out of personal loyalty to Prescott after years of service.
Blair and Prescott are a team and if one of them goes, the other will have to go too as they rely on each other. Weve seen this already, with Prescott getting himself in trouble, it weakens Blair's authority as he cannot simply drop him from the Cabinet a la Clarke.