LONDON, May 10: Britain's deputy prime minister John Prescott on Thursday announced his intention to resign, after Prime Minister Tony Blair confirmed he was stepping down.

“Tony and I were elected together back in 1994 and it has been an honour to serve as deputy to the most successful Labour prime minister ever,” Prescott said in an open letter to his constituency in Hull, in northeast England. “To have been deputy leader and the longest-serving deputy prime minister is a matter of great pride to me,” he wrote, after Blair said he would stand down on June 27.

Prescott, a married man, spent his last year in office shrouded by scandal after a tabloid newspaper revealed he had been conducting a two-year affair with a divorcee who was planning to marry someone else.

He is also famous for having once punched a protester who threw an egg at him during an election campaign, and is commonly known as “Two Jags” Prescott because of his use of official cars.—AFP