Britain’s former deputy prime minister John Prescott, who served under Tony Blair and with him helped transform the country’s Labour party, has died aged 86, his family said on Thursday.

“We are deeply saddened to inform you that our beloved husband, father and grandfather, John Prescott, passed away yesterday (Wednesday) at the age of 86,” a statement read.

Blair, the privately educated lawyer who appointed working-class Prescott to help appease the Labour left as he moved the party to the centre ground, said he was “devastated” at Prescott’s death.

“There was no one quite like him in British politics,” he told BBC radio.

As well as being a prominent figure on the domestic stage, Prescott led negotiations for Britain for the 1997 international Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Former US vice president and leading environmentalist Al Gore paid tribute to a “dear friend” and said he would be “forever grateful for his commitment to solving the climate crisis”.

“He fought like hell to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol and was an unwavering champion of climate action for decades to come,” he said in a statement.

“He possessed an inherent ability to connect with people about the issues that mattered to them — a talent that others spend years studying and cultivating, but that was second nature,” he added.

Gordon Brown, who succeeded Blair as prime minister, called Prescott a “colossus” and “titan of the Labour movement”.

He said he was “probably the first government minister to see the importance of the environment”, adding that the 1997 Kyoto agreement had to be attributed to “John’s hard work with Al Gore”.

Keir Starmer, who became Labour’s first prime minister since 2010 after a landslide general election win in July, called Prescott “a true giant of the Labour movement”.