Parliament & Politics: Prescott lines up with New Labour

PARTY POLICY

JOHN PRESCOTT publicly embraced "New Labour" last night and praised Tony Blair's fulfilment of manifesto commitments, including the minimum wage, trade union recognition and the reform of the House of Lords.

The Deputy Prime Minister's speech, which was firmly "on message", was intended to scotch reports over Christmas after the resignation of Peter Mandelson that he was challenging the direction of the Government. Mr Prescott, who has a reputation for avoiding the term "New Labour", used the speech in London to demonstrate that New Labour's objectives are identical with his own agenda for "traditional values in a modern setting".

The Deputy Prime Minister also reinforced the message that he has forged a close working relationship with Gordon Brown. He said the Chancellor's comprehensive spending review, which led to the redistribution of more than pounds 40bn to health and education, was a "tremendous credit" to Mr Brown. "Without Gordon Brown we would not have achieved the radical new forms of public-private partnership, recycling of road user charges, `green' principles in our code of taxation or the emphasis on increasing capital investment," he told a conference of the Centre for Local Economic Studies.

"We believe that a thriving economy and social justice are two sides of the same coin," he said. "I am proud to be a proponent of Labour's traditional values. But I am equally proud to be a champion of new thinking and modern methods, to achieve our aims in a modern way. Ignore all the journalistic prattle. Look at what my department is doing - putting New Labour principles into practical action."

Dismissing media coverage of the Government's "black Christmas" as "the politics of soap opera", Mr Prescott said: "I believe that the media concentration on gossip and personalities directly follows from the inability to sustain a serious attack on our policies."