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Britain’s former deputy prime minister John Prescott, who served under Tony Blair and helped him transform the country’s Labour party, has died aged 86, his family said on Thursday, prompting tributes from across the political spectrum.

Prescott, a former merchant seaman and trade union activist who served as a member of parliament for Hull in northern England for four decades, died ‘peacefully’ at a care home, his wife Pauline, and two sons said.

‘He did so surrounded by the love of his family and the jazz music of Marian Montgomery,’ they added in a statement.

Prescott, who was Blair’s no-nonsense deputy for all 10 years of his premiership between 1997 and 2007, suffered a stroke in 2019 and latterly had Alzheimer’s, which forced him to step down from his position in the House of Lords in July this year.

Blair, the privately educated lawyer who appointed working-class Prescott to help appease the Labour left as he moved the party to the more electable centre ground, said he was ‘devastated’ at Prescott’s death.

‘There was no one quite like him in British politics,’ he told BBC radio, while his successor, Gordon Brown, called him a ‘colossus’ and ‘titan of the Labour movement’.

As well as being a prominent figure on the domestic stage, Prescott led negotiations for Britain for the 1997 international Kyoto Protocol on climate change -- the first international treaty to set legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Former US vice president and leading environmentalist Al Gore paid tribute to a ‘dear friend’ and said he would be ‘forever grateful for his commitment to solving the climate crisis’.

‘He fought like hell to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol and was an unwavering champion of climate action for decades to come,’ he said.

‘He possessed an inherent ability to connect with people about the issues that mattered to them -- a talent that others spend years studying and cultivating, but that was second nature,’ he added.

Keir Starmer, who became Labour’s first prime minister since 2010 after a landslide general election win in July, paid tribute to Prescott’s defence of trade unions and working people.

‘During a decade as deputy prime minister, he was one of the key architects of a Labour government that transformed the lives of millions of people across the nation,’ he added.

‘So much of John’s work set the path for those of us fortunate enough to follow. From leading climate negotiations to fighting regional inequality, his legacy will live on well beyond his lifetime.’

A plain-speaking bear of a man, Prescott was a mainstay of Britain’s notoriously unforgiving tabloid newspapers who nicknamed him ‘Prezza’ and were always quick to highlight his mangled syntax.

Right-wing media outlets also mocked his use of two Jaguar cars, dubbing him ‘Two Jags’, and claimed photographs of him playing croquet at a stately home were evidence he had shed his working-class roots.

In 2006, he admitted to having had a two-year affair with his secretary.

But more often than not, the public was on Prescott’s side, none more so than in 2001 when the former boxer punched a protester who threw an egg at him on the election campaign trail.

Importantly, Prescott had his boss’s backing. ‘John is John,’ Blair smiled and shrugged after the incident.

Prescott acted as a key mediator in the turbulent relationship between Blair and his then-finance minister Brown, who also helmed the transformation of Labour from a party riven by ideological infighting into a viable party of power.

Blair said in a 2007 letter to Prescott that he saw his role as ‘smoothing out problems and sorting out colleagues and trouble-shooting’.

‘The completely unique Prescott blend of charm and brutality... got you through the decade, kept the government together and above all, gave me a lot of fun. I was lucky to have you as my deputy,’ he wrote.