The Sketch: Prescott punches his weight, lurking with the best of 'em

I remember a Fleet Street printer in the old days defending their comically restrictive practices.

"Well, sir," he said with amiable contempt. "It's a lurk, I agree. But the working man doesn't have many lurks and when he does, shouldn't he make the most of them? Gentlemen have many lurks. What time this morning, if I may ask, sir, did you get in?"

The question was addressed to my leader-writer friend. We laughed guiltily and backed away (the answer was 11.45am).

In the same tradition, the fire service is a lurk for the modern working man. Two shifts working, two shifts sleeping, four days off. Live in Wales, work in London, have a second job, retire with backache at 40.

It can't last but they might as well make the most of it while John Prescott shambles about the place enjoying one of the biggest lurks a working man can aspire to, the Deputy Prime Ministership.

His statement on the firemen's strike yesterday showed him at his best. At least at his most characteristic. It is clear why he's so effective in political arenas. He is a creature of extraordinary charm. It is the charm of the animal that is irredeemably itself. So powerful is this rule that it holds good even in Mr Prescott's case.

He's also much more slippery than you'd think. He's like a buttered pig you can't keep hold of. That's not good for David Davis, who was hoping to make a reputation by making bacon of the DPM. At his most effective, Mr Davis merely manages to pull the occasional pork chop out of the carcass.

There was enough there to make a meal of. Mr Prescott revealed that the strike had cost £100m, that three quarters of that was coming out of his own departmental budget (bad luck inner-city regeneration) and that he was shortly going to pass legislation to give total power over firemen's terms and conditions to (this will make you laugh) himself.

A huge centralisation of power, as Ed Davey observed. Based on rushed, emergency legislation. Who would be next on the hit list? Health workers? Ambulance drivers? And why not rely on compulsory binding arbitration?

Mr Prescott answered that taking total control over the process and assuming imperial powers was, in its way, a form of arbitration. How he enjoyed saying that. His tail twisting, he danced in front of the sty door.

Mr Prescott's political abilities may be essential to the Government's hold on power but of course he's completely useless at doing anything else.

Can we use his past to predict his future? The monstrous, multiple ministry he created and presided over with Hilary Armstrong (brain like a well-wrung dishcloth) has been broken up and their strategic, integrated, over-arching, cross-cutting, 10-year transport strategy is just now completing its long journey through the sewers to the sea.

It was a great lurk while it lasted. But luckily for him, if not entirely for us, he has found another.

simoncarr75@hotmail.com