IT'S AN odd role, Deputy Prime Minister, and its incumbents have often hit the headlines for the wrong reasons.

Remember Willie Whitelaw who shot a fellow grandee on a grouse moor? And now there's John Prescott who seems to have his sights trained firmly on his own feet.

I hope you won't be disappointed when I tell you that there's nothing in this column about canoodling or croquet. It won't add to the mountain of snide and snobbish comment on Prescott's behaviour. It will examine his political role. Because I believe it is an important one.

Whitelaw and Prescott are poles apart in politics and temperament, but there's one common factor. Like Whitelaw, Prescott provides the balance between two hostile factions. With Whitelaw it was the old-style Tories and Mrs Thatcher's new order - the toffs and the toughs. For Prescott, it is the modernisers with their flip-charts and focus groups and grass-roots "old" Labour for whom his background and shoot-from-the-lip manners are a reminder of the party before its red rose makeover.

In addition, Prescott - unlike Gordon Brown - is no threat, unless you're an egg-throwing protestor, of course. So, it is understandable that Tony Blair relies on John Prescott a little more than he lets on.

The balance which politicians like Prescott provide is critical to the health of governments. Without balance, ruling parties turn in on themselves. Remember 1997 - who were Tony Blair's best allies, his own party, or the imploding Tories fighting to get their finger on the self-destruct button?

Fast forward to 2006 and see how little it has taken to turn David Cameron from an opposition leader into world statesman-in-waiting.

Without balance, civil servants do not get the clear political steer they need and the business of government grinds to a halt. We now know that the great departments of state, health and Home Office, for example, on which we rely for safety and quality of life need firm direction and constant scrutiny. Political overlords with their minds elsewhere spell disaster.

The Prime Minister's solution to the Prescott problem was to strip him of power and leave him his perks, some of which he has now relinquished. That has left both men looking vulnerable. It has confirmed that Prescott has more than his fair share of flaws and foibles, but then is there anything scarier than a perfect politician? I doubt it.

If Prescott is to stay he should be doing the job he is paid for, which is to ensure the proper functioning of the Government. It is on his ability to do this job that we should judge him and nothing else because this is one of the times that we need to remind ourselves what politicians are there for. They're not there to preach and provide moral certainty. They are there to uphold a democratic framework and give us workable solutions to the problems and challenges our complex and at times fragile society faces.

Harold Macmillan, another politician who had to deal with scandal, once said if he wanted a sense of moral purpose, he would go to an archbishop, not a politician. They're words we would do well to remember.

Because when all the sniggering and the jokes have died down, the real business of government, from which we've been so easily distracted, will still be to do. And we will wake up to the fact that politics and running a country are no laughing matters.