Confirming its new status as the hostile mouthpiece of the Lib Dems, the New Statesman has run an article by former deputy Prime Minister John Prescott under a headline of

John Prescott on Labour: “This must be the worst operation I’ve ever seen”

Seeing that, you’d think he was talking about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. That’s very far from the case.

Instead, Prescott launches immediately into an attack on the [rebel] PLP (parliamentary Labour party) – and it’s in that context that he talks of an ‘operation’:

I’ve attended a thousand PLP meetings. This must be the worst operation I’ve ever seen. It is more about personality politics than in the past.

He talks briefly about the undoubted achievements of the last Labour government and the fact that its legacy has been obliterated by the disaster of the illegal Iraq war – but then, in case…