ANOTHER VOICE

I cannot prove it, or tell you why, but John Prescott is to be killed

MATTHEW PARR IS

Turning points are just that: locations rather than landmarks. A stone by the road- side, a shrub, a twisted tree may be unmemo- rable in themselves yet memorable for being the points upon which a journey turned,

For John Prescott, I am afraid, it was that windy walk in Bournemouth — the one he took a 200-yard ride in a Jaguar to avoid — which proved the turning point. The Battle for Pauline's Hair was only a minor skir- mish, but it occurred at some kind of water- shed. From then on it has been downhill for the Deputy Prime Minister.

And I think all is lost. I watched him in the Chamber last week delivering a statement on ... do you know, I can't even remember. I could look it up for you but, really, who cares? For nobody was taking a blind bit of notice of what Mr Prescott was saying. The Tories were giggling at him (that two-Jags joke of William Hague's in the Queen's Speech debate stung), the ministers beside him looked unimpressive and unimpressed, we sketchwriters had pencils poised only for the grammatical howlers we call Prescot- tisms', and behind the great Secretary of State was a dearth of those poodles whose panting attendance upon a minister — little bulging eyes on the main chance as they wag tails for their master and nip at the opposi- tion's legs — marks him as a coming force.

Prescott is a going force. Careers are no longer served by barking in this man's cause, and the chaps sense it. By some osmotic pro- cess colleagues know when a fellow is dead meat. They say you can tell by the change in Tony Blair's eyes when he looks at the vic- tim: the pupils narrow, as they did before he pulled the props from under Harriet Har- man and decided to kill her.

Prescott is also to be killed, but not yet. We cannot prove it, or tell you why, but we feel it. It may be a very slow death, and he may repine for years yet in a kind of career- coma, for Blair is likely to postpone switch- ing him off until after the next election. But the end is coming.

I am uncertain whether Mr Prescott knows this, but we do. Those invisible glass shields that guard Mr Blair's favoured sons have slid silently back in the night and he has awoken to find himself unprotected. At Bournemouth we noticed the glee among his senior colleagues when the story of Pauline's Hair hit the media. `Poor John.' And they let him swing.

Nothing would have been easier than for

a trusted privy counsellor to whisper in the ear of a favoured political editor that of course John had wanted to walk, but there were very good reasons — of a kind whose divulgence would be prejudicial to security — why he had been emphatically advised not to, not even for a few hundred yards, on this exposed cliff, I have heard such conver- sations, -and in the world of the British press lobby they are effective. This one would end, ... and, no, you can't print that security stuff; and I can't stop you pub; lishing a story which will make Pauline cry; so go on, write it — but you'll know, and I'll know, and Tony will know, that it wasn't fair.' This would have worked.

That nobody did it for Prescott was sub- liminally what made the Battle for Pauline's Hair such a significant engagement in observers' minds. The press hit the story hard; now I think nobody will ever forget it.

It serves well as a pivotal tale for a differ- ent reason, too — a reason characteristic of these turning points. Minor in itself, it roots into larger subterranean concerns about its subject. True or false, fair or unfair, the story becomes a type of parable. This one at Bournemouth speaks of vanity, of swag- ger, of laziness, of a careless failure of cir- cumspection, and of a certain dimwitted- ness. These were the whispers Prescott needed to rebut. Validating them, the tale takes root and flourishes as a 'telling' episode.

Everyone in public life should ask himself what are likely to be the doubts, possibly unexpressed, which people might harbour about him; and then take very great care to avoid any story which could neatly illustrate them. John Major could not, of course, have suppressed the tale of his sunburned goldfish, for it was told in confidence to Paddy Ashdown, and got out. But it came at the wrong time, and it chimed too well. If, though, we were to discover that Tony 'Join the Conservative party — go directly to jail.' Blair had gone to bizarre lengths personally to cosset young Katie's pet hamster, the news would be treated as a curiosity but, failing to fit any of the more common wor- ries people have about him, would fast fade. If, on the other hand, we heard that Mr Blair had directed his government chauffeur to take the Jaguar down to the pet shop and buy sawdust for the hamster's cage, the story would run and run. It could even become a turning point.

For Norman Lamont, I believe, Thresh- ers at Paddington, champagne and Raffles cigarettes were as much a turning point as Black Wednesday. How many of us proper- ly registered or now recall that the Thresh- ' ers story was afterwards shown to have been invented? Poor Norman never did by Raffles cigarettes there, but the story encapsulated an image we had been, per- haps unconsciously, building about the man, so the story stuck.

How do you know when you're close to what could later be seen as a turning point? Sometimes the signs are there. Watch out, for instance, for stale journalese such as 'in the wake of, 'after', 'following' or 'as' in stories about yourself. Such language is a sign that editors are minded to link things you have done as different examples of the same thing. For the next unarguably bad choice William Hague makes — of men or of policies — the opening paragraph of the report will write itself: 'As controversy con- tinues over William Hague's choice of Michael Ashcroft for Conservative Treasur- er, and in the wake of Lord Archer's shock resignation, it was yesterday revealed that even his appointment of [let us say] a new pastry-chef at his party's HQ has proved a disastrous misjudgment. Mr P. Chef was yesterday bound over at Southwark Crown Court....' Some pundit will be found to opine that this inevitably casts a further cloud on Mr Hague's already much- criticised judgment.

If Mr Chefs appointment is later found to have been against Hague's better judgment from the start, but acceded to in the face of pressure from Lady Thatcher, who recom- mended him, then, mark my words, the Pas- try Chef Affair will be chuckled over by wise heads for decades to come, as 'a melancholy turning point' in Mr Hague's career.

Matthew Pam's is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.