Six reasons Labour’s current Cabinet are pipsqueaks compared to the big beasts of old

The funeral of former deputy prime minister John Prescott took place on Thursday in his adopted home city of Hull, which he represented for 40 years. Even those who do not follow politics will almost certainly know a couple of things about Mr Prescott – first, that he was nicknamed “Two Jags” in honour of his pair of official cars, and secondly that he once punched a lout who had thrown an egg at him from point-blank range.

Prescott, who had been an amateur boxer during his days as a merchant seaman, turned down an instruction from Tony Blair to apologise for his pugilistic response to his younger and bigger assailant and opinion polls soon showed most of Britain was on his side.

He was, whatever else is said about him, a man of parts: a working man, turned trade unionist, turned senior politician. One notable thing about the array of Labour figures who attended his funeral was that those who served in the New Labour governments of 20 years or so ago seemed so much more substantial than their present-day counterparts. Jack Straw was photographed alongside Yvette Cooper – a past home secretary with the current one. Gordon Brown gave a eulogy, while today’s chancellor Rachel Reeves sat and listened. Tony Blair also spoke, while was there as Labour mourner-in-chief.

In each case, the comparison between a giant of the past and the modern-day holder of the same office did not flatter the younger person. It took me back to Labour’s 1997 manifesto launch, when the future Cabinet trooped in and it was full of people with big personalities and significant public followings: Blair, Brown, Prescott, Straw, Robin Cook and David Blunkett, Clare Short and Mo Mowlam too – the latter in a wig that alerted the media to her hitherto secret treatment for a brain tumour.

Whatever you thought about their politics – and I was generally anti – there was no doubt these were major figures of the day, just as Labour Cabinet ministers had been major figures the previous time the party had been in power: Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Denis Healey, Barbara Castle, Tony Benn, Roy Jenkins and the rest.

Now consider the present-day Lilliputians and weep.

The Chancellor – “Rachel From Accounts” – so obviously out of her depth at the Treasury and calling for a spirit of optimism after having destroyed any vestiges of positive business sentiment with her doom-mongering; clueless David Lammy as our actual Foreign Secretary; Cooper projecting all the grip over the Home Office of ’s Mavis Wilton called to high office from Rita’s Kabin, political motto: “I don’t really know.”

Then there is Starmer himself, devoid of charisma and with the communication ability of an “I Speak Your Weight” machine. But it gets worse, much worse. For these are the pick of the bunch, the big players. Further down the pecking order come the likes of the habitually-scowling Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, who is now setting about destroying academy schools in a blizzard of sixth form socialist dogma. This is the woman who accepted two freebie Taylor Swift tickets because “it was a hard one to turn down”, which hardly instils confidence.

And don’t forget the purple-haired former transport secretary Louise Haigh – mercifully departed – who could not even be trusted with a company mobile phone. Then there is Ed Miliband, whose mid-life crisis has seen him regress to singing utopian ditties about climate change while playing a ukulele and presiding over ruinous energy prices.

This is one reason I hope Peter Mandelson does become our next ambassador in Washington: at least we will have a grown-up in the room rather than whichever superannuated student radical Starmer would line up instead.

I am by no means donning rose-tinted spectacles – we all know Gordon Brown sold our gold off for a song and gutted occupational pensions with his tax raids, and that Tony Blair ushered in the long era of mass immigration, and introduced a ludicrous “human rights” agenda that favours criminals over the law-abiding

But for goodness sake, at least they were people of calibre, who could hold an audience and present an argument.

When Labour is expelled from office in four years or so – and who can doubt that’s going to happen? – it will have to send the search parties out.

Not, this time, for migrants but to find homegrown political talent that it can put in front of the British people without dying of embarrassment.