John Prescott has long been the laughing stock of British politics. Pompous, incoherent and serving no obviously useful function he is occasionally nominally in charge of running the British state.

Yet inside the Labour Party he has been seen as a central figure. On one hand he has been the living proof that anyone from a trade union background can still rise to (almost) the top of the party. Blair’s core personnel, with the exception of Alan Johnson, have virtually no experience or connection with the party’s union support.

Prescott has provided the “working class” camouflage for the Blairite transformation of New Labour. During the 1980s he became an early advocate of using the private sector to provide public services and has been moving right ever since.

His usefulness to Blair has been rewarded with handsome perks and salaries. Yet every department for which he has been given responsibility has been a shambles.

He made a hash of transport policy but was then given the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. This gave him responsibility for planning, local government and regional assemblies: this too has been a fiasco.

In many ways Prescott is the ultimate symbol of everything that is rotten about British Labourism. He started off as a shop steward in the merchant navy, entered Parliament and has worked his way up the Labour Party.

At every step he allowed himself to be seduced by the baubles of power and office. The “working class” minister was eager to have his free government apartment, his salary and allowances totalling in excess of £100,000 a year, his expenses-paid ministerial trips, and his now notorious pair of ministerial Jaguar cars … and was heartbroken at the prospect of losing the right to use the country house at Dorneywood.

Alan Johnson has been publicly salivating at the prospect of inheriting Prescott’s perks. He too is another one-time working class trade union activist who has been bought by the British ruling class.

Blair and Prescott deserve each other. They are both in their own ways responsible for New Labour’s imperialist neo-liberalism. They are allowing David Cameron to resurrect the Tories, and on some issues appear more left liberal than New Labour.

As we report in this issue they are also fertilising the ground for the emergence of the BNP as a credible electoral force.

New Labour has nothing to offer working people in Britain: and even those left-wing survivors who still try to “reclaim” the Labour Party from the Blairites have already discounted any short or medium term prospect of challenging for the leadership, while their criticisms and alternative views are simply ignored and excluded by Blair’s ruthless party machine.

So for anyone fighting back against Blair – his latest round of privatisation, his hostility to the unions and commitment to anti-union legislation, his onslaught on public sector jobs and services, his brutal betrayal of current and future pensioners, his contempt for civil liberties and democratic rights, his reactionary alliance with Bush and the global right wing, or his commitment to expanding nuclear power generation – the issue of a political alternative is urgently and irresistibly posed.

The question is how an alternative party can be built that will attract and represent militant and active elements from the working class, while preventing the kind of opportunist degeneration that has characterised Labour governments and Labour leaders over the years.

Socialist Resistance has argued from the beginning that Respect has the potential to be one of the major building blocks of a new party on the left in Britain.

Its councillors in Tower Hamlets have now adopted a programme of action which will quickly bring them into conflict with New Labour, particularly on its housing policy.

It is only through the development of a new party that learns from Labour’s past successes and mistakes and that is willing to engage in real class struggle that we will stop the corruption of people like Prescott, and prevent the demoralisation of Labour voters bringing another spell of Tory government.

That’s why the widening of Respect’s activity and organisation at local level to embrace a variety of issues in addition to the agitation against the occupation of Iraq is vital to minimise the numbers of despairing and alienated workers who may otherwise be drawn towards the bloody banner of the fascists.

This will be assisted by the forthcoming publication of an updated manifesto, already available on the Respect website, making clear the organisation’s underlying socialist politics.

And it’s why we welcome the fact that Respect is beginning to organise itself more as a party in which its increased number of elected councillors act collectively on common lines, and can expect to be held to account.

That’s how we can avoid Respect facing the embarrassment of spawning our own equivalents of Prescott and Alan Johnson, and ensure it stays loyal to the working class which must form its core support.