Politics & Power Quote by John Prescott

There is a particular kind of political self-portraiture at work here: the avuncular fixer who can claim both the lever and the moral outcome. Prescott starts with ownership - "I was the one that brought it in" - a blunt, almost pub-style assertion of agency meant to cut through Westminster fog. It signals a fight already won, a policy delivered, a legacy banked. The phrasing matters: its informality reads as authenticity, a working-class register that doubles as brand.

Then comes the pre-emptive defense against the most predictable charge: pork-barrel parochialism. "Not only for the north-east, for every area" is less geographic detail than political inoculation. Prescott is speaking from a New Labour moment obsessed with balancing London-centric growth against the promise of "modernization" for everyone else. The subtext is that regional inequality isn't accidental; it is an economic design problem government can rewire, if it chooses.

What really gives the line its muscle is the value chain he lays out like a grant application with a heartbeat: develop regional economies -> lift national productivity -> generate wealth -> share it more evenly. It's technocratic enough to sound responsible, but redistributive enough to sound principled. "Productivity" is the coded reassurance to business and middle England; "share it more evenly" is the olive branch to Labour's base. Prescott is stitching together two audiences who don't naturally trust each other, insisting the country can have growth without the old winners-take-all geography.