Former UK deputy prime minister John Prescott dies at 86

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John Prescott, the former UK deputy prime minister, has died aged 86, his family announced on Thursday morning.

“We are deeply saddened to inform you that our beloved husband, father and grandfather, John Prescott, passed away peacefully yesterday at the age of 86,” his family wrote in a post on his X profile.

Prescott served as deputy prime minister between 1997 and 2007 and was a key figure in Tony Blair’s New Labour project.

A former seaman who left school aged 15, Prescott spent 27 years as an MP before joining the cabinet after Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997.

Prescott sold New Labour to the party’s traditionalist wing and his campaigning played a sizeable part in the 1997 victory as well as its re-election in 2001 and 2005.

Prescott himself was proudest of his part in framing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

He is survived by his wife Pauline and two sons, Johnathan and David.