His family made the announcement in a statement.
Blair, the privately educated lawyer who appointed working-class Prescott to help appease the Labour left as he moved the party to the centre ground, said he was devastated at Prescott’s death.
Keir Starmer, who became Labour’s first prime minister since 2010 after a landslide general election win in July, called Prescott a true giant of the Labour movement.
Starmer added that Prescott was a staunch defender of working people and a proud trade unionist. 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.
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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.
Prescott, who was appointed to the House of Lords, suffered a stroke in 2019 and had been suffering from Alzheimer’s. He stopped being a member of the upper chamber of parliament in July because of his health problems.
Plain-speaking, Prescott served for 10 years as Blair’s deputy following Labour’s landslide 1997 general election win. During a campaign stop in north Wales he punched a protester who threw an egg at him. But he also acted as a mediator between Blair and his finance minister Gordon Brown, who also helmed the transformation of Labour in the 1990s and who had designs on power.
Prescott’s brief included the environment and transport, as well as leading negotiations for Britain for the international Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
Blair said in a 2007 letter to Prescott that he saw his role as smoothing out colleagues and sorting out colleagues and trouble-shooting.