JOHN PRESCOTT has indicated that he has no intention of stepping down voluntarily, defying the growing number of Labour MPs calling on him to give up his job.

As three more Labour backbenchers broke ranks and Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner, publicly failed to back Mr Prescott, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown dug in to protect the embattled Deputy Prime Minister, whom they see as crucial to the plans for an orderly transition.

This comes after the publication at the weekend of damaging photographs showing Mr Prescott playing croquet on a Thursday afternoon, hours after Mr Blair left for Washington for a summit with President Bush. Friends of the Deputy Prime Minister fought back against the criticism yesterday, expressing astonishment at the notion that he should resign for playing a game of croquet.

“If he’s played one game of croquet at Dorneywood with his staff, he’s played hundreds. They have just chosen now to go after John,” one friend said. He added that technically Mr Prescott was not running the country when the pictures were taken. This began at the point Mr Blair departed for his holiday on Saturday morning.

Despite at least seven MPs calling on Mr Prescott to give up his government role and perks, many privately acknowledge that his fate is linked with Mr Blair’s. Mr Prescott has promised to go at the same time as the Prime Minister, and an early contest for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party would be awkward.

There was astonishment yesterday, however, at the intervention of Mr Mandelson, who fell out with Mr Prescott in 1997 after the Deputy Prime Minister held up a crab for the TV cameras and pointedly named him “Peter”.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether Mr Prescott should resign, Mr Mandelson would only say that Mr Prescott would do whatever was “in the party’s interests”. This prompted fury among some Labour MPs. One senior figure said: “Peter Mandelson should concentrate on the job he got in Europe, despite having had two forced resignations from the Cabinet.”

Throughout the day, Labour MPs continued to denounce the actions of Mr Prescott. Christine McCafferty, the MP for Calder Valley, said that he was driving women voters into the arms of the other parties. “I don’t believe we are going to be able to re-engage those women while they have a perception that the party is rewarding someone who has had an affair with an employee,” she said. “I think he ought to now resign.”

Derek Wyatt, MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey, said that Mr Blair should strip Mr Prescott of his Cabinet job but allow him to stay on as deputy party leader.

“I don’t think it is tenable that he should maintain Dorneywood or the Admiralty flat or the chairmanship of the committees. He was elected as deputy leader, so it would be his decision to step down as deputy leader.”

Stephen Pound, MP for Ealing North, said: “You can survive anything except ridicule. As for the pictures of him playing croquet, the killer here was that the day before he was saying he had this incredibly busy job. It is hard to get back from this.”

Friends of Mr Prescott said that much of criticism stemmed from rivals jockeying to succeed him. Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Harriet Harman the Solictor-General, and Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, are thought to be among the front-runners.

Paul Clark, Mr Prescott’s parliamentary aide, who was one of those photographed playing croquet, said: “It could be seen from public land and we have nothing to hide whatsoever.”

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