In government he struggled to meet his own and others’ expectations. Out of office he was truly one of the greats. Robin Cook, who died yesterday, will most be remembered for his passionate but always practical opposition to Tony Blair’s war in Iraq. Both in resigning on the eve of the invasion and in his conduct that followed he restored a sense of principle to a political world that had lost its moral compass.
I first approached Cook on the eve of the 1997 general election. I told him that, whether he liked it or not, I was writing a biography of him. He was both suspicious and flattered. He said he would co-operate on matters political, not personal. It was only a few months later, when revelations of his break-up with his wife Margaret were splashed across the newspapers, that I fully understood what he meant.
I followed him through the heady first months in the office of foreign secretary and in his darkest period when he contemplated resignation and feared that his career was over. In one sense it was. A man of fierce independence, who had little time for those whose intellects he believed did not match his own, would become a prisoner of the Blair machine. Cook was not without achievements at the Foreign Office, but such was his vulnerability that Blair removed him unceremoniously at the 2001 election and demoted him to leader of the House of Commons. His career appeared all but over, until Iraq.
I remember him telling me about his youthful precocity: “I was possibly rather single-mindedly intellectual in my image and pursuits.” He became head of the debating society at school, combining both mastery of argument with low political tactics, garnering votes off friends. At Edinburgh University, where he studied English, he continued in the same vein, becoming the leading political light there.
Cook could easily have become a preacher, or a teacher. After university he set about his doctorate in the arcane subject of “sanitation and the Victorian novel”, but quickly turned his attentions to politics and the local Labour party.
Once elected to Westminster, he became intensely proud of the institution. Within months he had gained a reputation as an orator to be watched. But Cook did not endear himself to party traditionalists, constantly challenging the logic of arguments. He was an ardent supporter of unilateral nuclear disarmament and an opponent of Britain’s membership to the Common Market. His first significant foray into journalism was as defence correspondent of the New Statesman, berating the administrations of Wilson and his successor Jim Callaghan.
During the Thatcher years, Cook’s strengths and weaknesses became accentuated — his parliamentary talents were unrivalled, but the party leadership was nervous of him. Cook made his way, slowly — too slowly for his liking — up the front bench. On the way, in charge of health, he destroyed the career of John Moore, a minister tipped to become the next Tory leader. But such was Neil Kinnock’s distrust of him that when he completed a major reshuffle in 1989, he failed to tell Cook of his plans. Most galling of all was that a certain Gordon Brown was given the job he wanted, shadowing at trade and industry.
Every political animal in Scotland has his own theory about the root cause of the Cook-Brown animosity. The city of Edinburgh did not feel quite big enough for these two great intellects, bruisers and egos. The two men had co-operated on a book of speeches and essays in 1974, and so in 1983 it seemed natural for them to work together. The most convincing explanation I have been given is that Brown never forgave Cook for trying to upstage him at a press launch for their latest joint manifesto that year, by starting the meeting early before his partner had arrived.
By the late 1980s the Labour hierarchy had identified Brown and Tony Blair as the coming men. It was around this point that Peter Mandelson, Labour’s spin doctor on the march, began briefing against Cook. Whatever the personality clashes, Cook was certainly not “modernising” with the speed of the others.
In 1994 Cook was furious to be told by the new leader, Blair, that he was to be responsible for foreign affairs. He regarded this as a tactic to keep him away from the heart of decision-making, which in large part it was. It was also one of Brown’s terms for standing down in favour of Blair during the leadership contest. Brown was now the economic master, and Cook, much to his chagrin, had to put up with it. Cook wrested one concession from Blair — to be allowed to continue leading Labour’s attack on John Major in the arms-to-Iraq scandal. February 15, 1996, will go down as one of Cook’s two great parliamentary moments.
Ministers had been given eight days to devour and deconstruct the 2,000-page report by Sir Richard Scott. Cook had a couple of hours, on his own. After rehearsing a speech the night before with his good friend, Peter Hain, he delivered a Commons tour de force, almost bringing down the Conservative government.
I remember talking to Cook immediately after the 1997 election. He was strangely depressed, fearing that he would not enjoy life in a Blair government. Or perhaps he knew that his marriage problems would soon surface. In any event, he certainly took to his grand office with alacrity. Within weeks he launched amid great fanfare his mission statement, proclaiming a new ethical dimension to foreign policy. This was much mocked inside No 10, particularly by Blair and his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell. When, a few months later, Cook announced he had forbidden one particular contract to sell military equipment to the Indonesian dictatorship, Blair was furious.
Gradually, the two men found an accommodation, of sorts. Cook fully supported Blair’s use of airstrikes against Saddam Hussein, in Operation Desert Fox, in December 1998, and the war against Slobodan Milosevic over Kosovo the following year. Cook was proud of his role in bringing the big powers together at negotiations in Rambouillet, near Paris. He was as passionate as his boss about the use of military force for “ethical” ends. Blair began to respect him in other areas as well, particularly his handling of tortuous EU discussions, but this did not stop him from demoting him in 2001.
Cook tried to inject the same enthusiasm for the House of Commons job. He tried hard to force modernisation onto reluctant MPs and peers. Blair was not interested, and went out of his way to undermine plans to introduce a fully or largely elected upper chamber.
In 2002, as Blair agreed secretly to go to war with George W Bush, Cook was the first to raise concerns in cabinet. He did so politely, but forcibly. He was ignored. The only colleague who came close to backing him was Clare Short. It was one of the tragedies of that period that two such close political soul mates could barely talk to each other, let alone co-ordinate a strategy. Cook’s line of reasoning was stunning for its foresight. He had seen the same intelligence as others, and simply did not believe it stood up. He worried that the evidence of Saddam possessing weapons of mass destruction was flimsy. He worried that Blair was rushing into a campaign in a desperate attempt to show loyalty to the US, without giving heed to the consequences. He warned Blair that by going to war, he would inflame the Middle East.
On the afternoon of March 17, 2003, a week before the invasion, Cook told Blair he was quitting the government. In spite of his fury and worry over the folly of the prime minister’s actions, Cook agreed to go with a minimum of fuss. He agreed to make his resignation speech that evening. Had he done so, as was his right, the following day at the start of the big parliamentary debate on the war, he could have brought the government down. Everyone in the Commons remembers his words: “Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term.”
Robin Cook was thoroughly vindicated. Blair’s war in Iraq, his fifth in six years, was one of the great catastrophes of post-second world war British and international politics. If the prime minister had listened more and disdained less a man of greater intellect, Britain might not be in the terrible predicament it is in today.
The author is the editor of the New Statesman and Robin Cook’s biographer
