First, the caveats. If John Prescott really were the unflinchingly loyal and principled conscience of the Labour party - which is how many, including he himself, regard the man - then he wouldn't have published this book now. He cannot pretend it isn't damaging to Gordon Brown's government, or to the party to which he has devoted most of his life. He's done it for the dosh, of course - recognising that few will be interested in it once Brown is removed from office. As such, then, the book is in moral terms no better than Lord Levy's hilarious paean to himself or Cherie Blair's self-obsessed mewing. And more damaging, in a way, given that Prescott portrays himself as the honest broker in the rancorous struggle between Blair and Brown: the Brown that emerges here is a bitter, suspicious and arrogant creature. And even though Prescott respects Brown's talents, he is still referred to slightingly as one of the “beautiful people”, that tranche of well-brought-up, middle-class arrivistes who hijacked the Labour party (with, it has to be said, Prescott's connivance). Also - this “pulling no punches” shtick...well, he does. He pulls them when not to do so might cause him embarrassment - so you get no details of his extramarital affair. Prescott argues that this is because he doesn't wish to hurt the other people involved. Yeah, right. Hurting other people doesn't seem to have been a sticking point elsewhere in the book.

But that said, this is a terrific political autobiography of a kind that we may not see again. Take a look around the front benches of our three leading political parties and you will see ranks of cosmetically attractive public schoolboys whose elision to political office was swift and unhindered. In many cases they have only ever been politicians or policy wonks, or journalists working on the fringes of politics and of course the inevitable swathes of lawyers. I wonder if a ship's steward from the northwest will ever become an MP again, still less deputy prime minister. The early part of this book - dealing with Prescott's mediocre academic career at a secondary school, his days as a waiter and ship's steward, his battle to get accepted for an unlikely degree at Ruskin College, always hampered by his slender grasp of English and, hopping around in the background, his roguish, one-legged drunkard of a dad - is compelling and affecting stuff. More interesting, too, than the later parts, after he achieved high office.

Also, this is by far the best-written of the current slew of memoirs emanating, like the whiff of decay, from the corpse of new Labour. This is because Prescott, who seems to be borderline illiterate, entrusted the task of writing to the excellent Hunter Davies. The ghost has captured Prescott's character beautifully; short, no-nonsense, pugnacious sentences, like a succession of jabs to the solar plexus. The book rocks along, even when dealing with policy detail (at which Prescott was extremely adept indeed, being both imaginative and always able to see the wood for the trees).

There is a lot to like about the man, and quite a lot to dislike, too. He is perpetually obstreperous, combative, tribal and brutally pragmatic, ill-tempered, honest, principled and - as you might expect - unaffected. His feet are kept on the ground by his wife, Pauline - who remarked, when they first saw his grace-and-favour apartment at the Admiralty Arch: “John, where shall we put the milk bottles?” He seems filled with a quite untrammelled loathing. “I...didn't want to have anything to do with any Tory, as I disliked them all,” he says, as an explanation for why he refused to sign up to the House of Commons pairing system. So, that's the Conservatives dealt with - but he is scarcely less kind about the Liberal Democrats (telling Paddy Ashdown he'd have nothing to do with them because he didn't like them either) or indeed about the multifarious factions of his own party.

He has no time for “the Sisters” - Labour's raft of “feminist” MPs, such as Harriet Harman and Margaret Beckett. He clearly hated Philip Gould, Labour's boss of focus groups and polling, whose machinations he compares to “reading tea leaves” and “throwing bones”. He thought the Labour left was unrealistic and the Labour right... well, right-wing. He couldn't stand Harold Wilson or James Callaghan, and Neil Kinnock (the one Labour politician you might have expected him to like, because of their shared working-class roots) he fell out with almost immediately. He worked with the “beautiful people” - on his terms, mind - but didn't like them very much, and screamed abuse at Tony Blair (“you little shit!”) when he thought, correctly, that he was being wheeled out to bring the Labour rank and file onside when Blair was proposing to scrap Clause Four.

About the only person for whom he has unqualified admiration, aside from Pauline and his mum, is the late Labour party leader John Smith, whom he considers far brighter than either Blair or Brown. When I was a member of the Labour party I voted for Prescott whenever he stood for office; reading this fine book, I'm glad I did.

Prezza - My Story by John Prescott
with Hunter Davies
Headline Review £14.99 pp405 Buy the book £13.49 plus free delivery

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