SHOULD A CABINET minister be allowed to (a) go on holiday; (b) take a free holiday; (c) play croquet? Should (a) John Reid; (b) Tony Blair; (c) John Prescott resign? Or (d) all of the above?

In case you missed it, Mr Blair is under fire for poncing off to Prince Girolamo Strozzi’s Tuscan villa again, while the new Home Secretary, John Reid, told the Daily Mirror he would “f****** well work 18 hours a day to sort this out”, shortly before leaving for a five-day break in the South of France — pretty much par for the course for both of them.

But it is the croquet balls of the very “bizi” Deputy Prime Minister that have ricocheted through Westminster, with a growing chorus of calls for Mr Prescott to resign because he was spotted wielding a mallet when he was, supposedly, in charge of the country.

In fact the Deputy Prime Minister wasn’t in charge of the country last Thursday, with Mr Blair airborne en route to Washington (he returned to London then went to Italy; keep up). The Prime Minister hadn’t “handed over the Government to his deputy”, as they glamorously put it, but was staying in charge electronically, from the skies, a bit like God, I suppose.

It doesn’t matter anyway. The claim that Mr Prescott is from time to time “in charge of the country” has always been a joke. This is the annual August show, where the DPM wanders around the country trying on silly outfits and occasionally putting his foot in it. No decisions are taken; no one seriously hurt; no harm done.

So the fuss about the croquet has nothing to do with Mr Prescott taking a break when he should have been at his desk. It has everything to do with the fact that he was playing croquet. Class war is alive and kicking in the Labour Party, and now it is kicking a man who poses as bloke of the people while adorning himself with all the accoutrements of the bourgeois (did you see those slacks?) on the up. MPs hate it. Getting entwined with a secretary is bad enough; playing croquet is the final straw.

Nor is the row really about the DPM hanging on to his Admiralty Arch flat and the Dorneywood country house as well as the £134,000 salary when he no longer has a job to do. Mr Prescott never really had a job to do; he was lobbed the odd department to keep him happy but he never got much done in them. He only had the freebie mansion because the Chancellor, who was offered Dorneywood, and presumably is not a man for croquet, couldn’t think what one would do in a house like that, and gave it over to Mr Prescott.

But why, they are crying, now that he is a laughing stock not only in the country, which he has been for some time, but at Westminster as well, is the DPM still in position? A number of theories have been proffered. First, that he is still the only man to broker the exchange of power between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. This isn’t true. Surely it is obvious now that the only men who can broker the exchange of power are Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. With a handover date by next autumn as good as publicly announced now, there isn’t anything for Mr Prescott to do.

Secondly, it is suggested that Mr Prescott has a “secret hold” over Mr Blair, probably due to confidences gleaned over the years about promises made by the Prime Minister to Mr Brown and then broken. This is a joke. Thanks to assiduous briefings from all sides we all know precisely what Mr Blair said and didn’t say to Mr Brown, and what the Chancellor said back to him or Mr Prescott, and where, and how, and which Islington restaurant/Scottish oyster bar it was said at. This secret saga has long been an unsecret.

Thirdly, it is said — at least it was yesterday by the new Defence Secretary, Des Browne — that the DPM is still needed to carry out his “very important job [and it’s] at the heart of Government” — chairing nine minor Cabinet committees. Mr Browne is obviously possessed of a sense of humour hitherto hidden in the bowels of the Treasury.

The reason that Mr Prescott remains in office, with all the trappings of power he insisted on keeping, is that the Prime Minister dare not take the step of removing either title or house and potentially sparking a contest for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, something neither he nor the Chancellor wants. And the reason that neither of them wants that is partly practical — it would be expensive and wasteful a year before a leadership election — and partly political: there is no alternative candidate acceptable to both of them.

A potential rival to Mr Brown as deputy Labour leader, with a year to flex his muscles and build up a body of support in the party to rival the Chancellor’s? Not on the Chancellor’s nelly. Anyway, what Mr Brown is going to need is a female deputy, to counter the haemorrhaging of the ladies’ vote to David Cameron. Tessa Jowell is out — too many offshore trusts, too new Labour. Harriet Harman is making a bold pitch for the job with the interesting suggestion that Labour needs two deputies, but Mr Blair wouldn’t touch her with a croquet peg. Not Blairite enough for Mr Blair. The best candidate might be Margaret Beckett but she is a bit old and has done the job before. It would bring new Labour full circle back to the days of John Smith, a neat symbol but not one Mr Blair would savour.

So Mr Prescott stands, mallet in hand, a highly visible symbol of the paralysis of new Labour. They can’t move forwards, they daren’t move back. Only he can break it, by resigning as deputy Prime Minister but remaining as deputy Labour leader until next year.

For as long as he remains in Dorneywood, Admiralty Arch and government office, Mr Prescott will symbolise the sad fact that the bright new dawn of new Labour has broken into a bit of a joke.

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