LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Britain’s former deputy prime minister John Prescott, who served under Tony Blair and helped him transform the country’s Labour party, has died aged 86, his family said on Thursday, prompting tributes from across the political spectrum.

Prescott, a former merchant seaman and trade union activist who served as a member of parliament for Hull in northern England for four decades, died “peacefully” at a care home, his wife Pauline, and two sons said.

“He did so surrounded by the love of his family and the jazz music of Marian Montgomery,” they added in a statement.

Prescott, who was Blair’s no-nonsense deputy for all 10 years of his premiership between 1997 and 2007, suffered a stroke in 2019 and latterly had Alzheimer’s, which forced him to step down from his position in the House of Lords in July this year.

Blair, the privately educated lawyer who appointed working-class Prescott to help appease the Labour left as he moved the party to the more electable centre ground, said he was “devastated” at Prescott’s death.

“There was no one quite like him in British politics,” he told BBC radio, while his successor, Gordon Brown, called him a “colossus” and “titan of the Labour movement”.