MP for Hull, and Blair’s Deputy PM. Probably the last of ‘Old’ Labour. Working-class origins, worked on the Hull ferries, came up via the Trade Union movement and Ruskin College. Much mocked by his social ‘superiors’, but a good and warm-hearted man, with solid socialist principles. (I met him very briefly on a train to Hull. Second-class carriage, of course.)

He was a decent man. Strange how far away the optimism of 1997 seems today.
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