Sooner Prezza Than Rawzzla

I cannot be bothered to track down the link to Andrew Rawnsley’s viciously snobbish Observer review of John Prescott’s autobiography. “It is not even funny”, the only function of the lower orders. Gazza has “similarities to Prezza to obvious to list”, although beyond being from the North (they come from very different sections of the working class, although that will have been entirely lost on Rawnsley), I cannot think of a single one.

Like Blair, Rawnsley has not the faintest understanding of what the old Clause Four actually said. For his information, it did not mention nationalisation at all, and even as it stood it never formed part of any Labour Manifesto. But it is no wonder that he was once so pro-Blair and is now so pro-Cameron. Anything to keep out those not on the North London dinner party circuit. And Rawnsley, any book about New Labour “serves to diminish what it should be explaining”. Such is the nature of New Labour. Did you never notice?

Rawnsley is troubled, not that Prescott broke his marriage vows, but that he did so with a woman called Tracey, whom Rawnsley wrongly describes as “an office junior”.

However, he is most revealing when he states that regional assemblies were “a total flop, even in [Prescott’s] own North East”. He does not even known that Hull is not in the North East. He really does know nothing at all about Britain beyond London and the studenty bits of either Oxford or Cambridge, as the case may be.

Bring back the grammar schools, and rid this country’s public life of everyone even vaguely like the preposterous Andrew Rawnsley, never mind Rawnsley himself.