John Prescott drafted in by Ed Miliband to 'bash Labour heads together'
ED Miliband has summoned Labour veteran Lord Prescott into his election team amid growing disarray in the party’s ranks.
The Labour leader has appointed the former Deputy Prime Minister as a key adviser to “bash heads together” on the issue of climate change.
The surprise political comeback came after fresh signs of disunity. Frontbench MPs attacked shadow chancellor Ed Balls for a string of gaffes and urged Mr Miliband to sack him.
In a newspaper column yesterday Lord Prescott said: “I’ve accepted an offer from Ed Miliband to become his climate change adviser.” He said the unpaid job was to advised the Labour leader in the run-up to an international summit on the environment in Paris in December.
He said: “My brief is to engage heads of state and governments, to raise their ambition. He’s also asked me to ‘bash their heads together’, intellectually, of course.”
Lord Prescott once famously punched an egg-throwing protester during an election campaign.
[Ed] has also asked me to ‘bash their heads together’, intellectually, of course
Labour insiders suspect his recruitment is an attempt to bring some authority into Mr Miliband’s inner circle.
Concern was said to be deepening in Labour ranks about a rift between the leader and Mr Balls.
One shadow cabinet minister was reported to have called for Mr Balls to be moved to a non-Treasury job if Labour gain power, saying he was “not a team player”.
There was more woe for Labour yesterday when former ally Lord Digby Jones accused them of being repeatedly wrong about the state of the economy.
The cross-bench peer, a trade minister in Gordon Brown’s government, said: “It pains me to say that on the economy Miliband and his team have called it wrong time and again.”
