sock, Prescott, what if?

Via Stoa Chris, a counterfactual:

There is one fascinating counterfactual to emerge from Prezza. It concerns the incident when he punched an egg-throwing protester in Wales during the 2001 general election. He includes a photo of the punch, a solid left jab right on the man’s chin. There was a furore, which Prescott survived because the public (not the papers, not at first) were largely on his side. But Prescott was an amateur boxer in his youth, and on page 118-19 there is a photo of him landing what looks like a knockout punch on an opponent. He is right-handed, and the knockout punch was a right. Here is the counter-factual: if 16-stone Prescott had hit the egg-thrower with his right, he would have knocked him out, and quite likely have broken his jaw. If either of those things had happened – if the man had ended up in hospital – Prescott would have had to resign. Whoever Blair appointed as his new deputy prime minister would have had much less pull with the party, because no one had as much pull with the party as Prescott. So when the crucial vote on the Iraq war came, Blair wouldn’t have had a deputy able to bring the party onside in the way that Prescott did. Instead of 139 Labour MPs voting against the war, a majority of them would have voted against, Blair would (as he said in private) have had to resign, and we wouldn’t have gone to war. And all because, for once, a New Labour figure didn’t lean to the right.

Nice try. Problem is that as I recall, Prezza made a half turn away to line up the shoulder and then threw the available punch given the way in which the two were standing in relation to each other. The yokel wasn’t set up to receive anything else. There’s also the likelihood of breaking your knuckles if you punch someone hard full in the face without gloves. Paradoxically it’s his boxing knowledge that makes it both more likely that Prescott would throw a punch and that he would throw the exact kind of punch he did.

So the counterfactual should be something like “what if the egg thrower had approached in a stance that made it convenient for Prescott to ram his floating rib into his liver?”

Comments

[ejh]

They could have made Clare Short deputy, that would presumably have done the trick.

[Alex]

Also, as I recall, Prescott was going for the follow-up right cross, having put his man off balance with the left jab, when his detective (? possibly just some random apparatchik) intervened. Had he landed that one, I reckon yer man was going down.

[ejh]

I've looked at the footage several times and I don't think that's right: in fact, if anything, after landing the very effective jab, Prescott seems to panic and try to go into a clinch.