JOHN PRESCOTT has become a pathetic figure, despised by his Cabinet colleagues, Labour MPs and senior civil servants. Even in his reduced role as Cabinet committee chairman, he is no longer fit for purpose and is now hurting Tony Blair.

The main argument for Mr Prescott was that he represented a political ballast in the Cabinet, connecting Mr Blair with its traditional working-class roots, and anchoring the tricky Blair-Brown relationship. But these roles have now been undermined by Mr Prescott’s failings and his ministerial record has been patchy-to-weak at best, as epitomised by the fiasco over elected regional assemblies.

Mr Prescott has been foolish and arrogant rather than corrupt. He was not personally involved in the decisions on planning permission or a casino licence for the Dome site owned by Philip Anschutz. But Mr Prescott showed poor judgment in accepting Mr Anschutz’s hospitality at his Colorado ranch, as the robust comments by Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, show. The Standards and Privileges Committee of the Commons noted yesterday that the hospitality came “from a source that might reasonably have been thought likely to influence ministerial action”. This is the key test for recording hospitality received in a ministerial capacity in the Register of Members’ Interests.

The failure to register the visit until 11 months later is not itself a hanging offence, as the MPs rightly concluded, but Mr Blair was mistaken not to order an inquiry into whether the Ministerial Code has been breached, as it apparently has.

The whole process of examining breaches of the code remains a mess, despite the appointment of Sir John Bourn as an adviser on ministers’ interests. As the MPs and the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life said, there should be an independent element in such inquiries about complaints. Mr Blair remains unable to understand why such ethical questions matter. The attempt by the Prime Minister’s spokesman to draw a line under the affair will not work.

This episode, coming after his earlier troubles, reinforces the image of Mr Prescott as an arrogant bully. What is important is not whether he had an affair, that is an issue for him and his wife, but the impression that he does not understand proper behaviour for a minister in office.

Resignation hunting can be a fatuous, and often selfrighteous, exercise. In Mr Prescott’s case it is not just one offence, but an accumulation of incidents each further undermining his reputation and credibility.

The popular notion that Mr Prescott will somehow be “in charge of the country” when Mr Blair starts his holidays in a fortnight is absurd. Any decisions on the Lebanon war, or Iraq and the like, will be taken by Mr Blair wherever he is. Mr Prescott’s role will be marginal and probably comic.

Mr Blair has mishandled the affair by not recognising either its seriousness or the steady erosion in Mr Prescott’s political position. The Prime Minister has not wanted a deputy leadership election reopening all the wounds in the Labour Party. But now Mr Blair is himself vulnerable. He risks criticism, and worse, by retaining a deputy who is such an embarrassment.

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