LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — John Prescott, Britain’s former deputy prime minister who served under Tony Blair and helped him transform the country’s Labor Party, has died at the age of 86, his family said Thursday, sending a shock wave across the political spectrum. It sparked praise from all over.

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

“He did this 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 10 years during his premiership between 1997 and 2007, suffered a stroke in 2019 and most recently developed Alzheimer’s, which forced him to resign from his post in the House of Lords in July this year.

Privately trained lawyer Blair, who recruited the working-class Prescott to help appease the Labor left while moving the party to a more electable centre, said he was “devastated” by Prescott’s death.

“There was no one like him in British politics,” he told BBC radio, while his successor Gordon Brown described him as “huge” and “the titan of the Labor movement”.