In a scathing attack yesterday the former British prime minister, Mr John Major, likened the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr John Prescott, to a football hooligan.
He said it was unbelievable that Mr Prescott could ever again be taken "remotely seriously" following the Labour MP's scuffle with a demonstrator. "I think it is quite unbelievable that a senior politician should behave in that way," Mr Major said in an interview with a local newspaper.
"He now has a protection team. Whether the protection team is to protect him or the public from him is a question worth asking. He behaved like a football hooligan."
Mr Major stopped short of calling on the Prime Minister, Mr Blair, to sack Mr Prescott following the clash with a farm worker, Mr Craig Evans, in north Wales last week. But the former Conservative leader, who retired as MP for Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, doubted whether he would have kept Mr Prescott in his Cabinet.
"I don't think he could have stayed in a senior government position, no," Mr Major told the Eastern Daily Press, in Norwich.