Robin Cook, a former British Foreign Secretary who died Saturday, once described the corridor that leads to the chamber of the House of Commons as “the longest walk”.
Formidable as he was in that forum, supremely confident though he would appear as he took apart some hapless opponent, he was always nervous before a big speech on a crucial parliamentary occasion. That is because he took the Commons seriously. And it was in the Commons that other politicians learned to take him very seriously indeed.
In a political age in which television and radio are usually the makers and breakers of political careers, this man of the radical left made his reputation in the traditional way: As a master of parliamentary debate.
His most stellar performance when Labour was in opposition was — ironically, given later events — his assault from the dispatch box on the Conservatives over the arms-to-Iraq scandal. Given just a couple of hours to speed-read the many volumes of the Scott report, Cook produced one of the single most devastating attacks by a Labour frontbencher on the Conservative government of the Major era. People marveled at his triumph, among them Tony Blair, who sent Cook a note describing it as the most brilliant parliamentary performance he had ever witnessed.
What was not well known at the time was that Cook had cannily pre-written most of his speech in the days leading up to the debate and then rehearsed it the night before. That does not detract from his achievement; if anything, it adds further luster to it. His genius was to extract all the most damaging points from the Scott report and then to insert them into the speech where they would have the most wounding effect in his scornful demolition of the Tories.
A man with a belief in the power of reasoned argument, he brought to his parliamentary performances a forensic eye for the telling detail, a powerful intellect and an acidic wit. He also brought that to his more private dealings with colleagues, which did not enhance his popularity with a lot of them. He was not a team player; he was a loner in the gregarious world of politics. Many colleagues found him easier to admire than to be fond of.
Though his career did not take him to the heights that he had once dreamed of, he was enormously pleased in 1997 to become foreign secretary. “Not bad for the son of a chemist,” he once said to me.
Though he could be very proud, he could also be engagingly self-deprecating. Some of his sharpest anecdotes and best jokes were at his own expense. When he arrived at the Foreign Office, he had a hotline to his counterpart in America installed in his private office. He would happily relate how it did not ring for a fortnight. Then, when it finally did, the caller was a man who wanted to order a takeaway pizza. He made some progress with his ambition to fashion a more “ethical dimension” to British foreign policy, but was undermined by the early decision to continue exporting arms to Indonesia, felt frustrated by Number 10 and was weakened by the mockery of much of the media over the turbulence in his personal life.
It was an achievement of Cook’s period at the Foreign Office to get the Iranians to end the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Tony Blair rated him for his support during the Kosovo war to save the Muslims there from ethnic-cleansing. But Cook had accommodated himself to New Labour rather than ever becoming an enthusiast for it. He was never a part of the inner circle and was even more distant from Gordon Brown. He was not powerful enough to stop Tony Blair demoting him to Leader of the House after the 2001 election.
A traditionalist in his belief in the importance of Commons debate, he was a modernizer in terms of the composition and working of the legislature. He could not persuade the prime minister to embrace the idea of an elected House of Lords, but he did change the House of Commons. Cook’s biggest achievement was to lead the reform to make the hours more sensible, a legacy for which he will be thanked by many future generations of MPs, especially those with young families.
Iraq was again the subject when he delivered his second command parliamentary performance: His resignation speech. His departure from the Cabinet was one of those highly rare exits from government that enhances the reputation of the resigning minister.
His was the first resignation from the Blair Cabinet on a point of principle. Even those who most profoundly disagreed with him about removal of Saddam will acknowledge that he was the most incisively potent of the war’s opponents. Just as the Tories had once learned to dread the attacks he could unleash as an opposition frontbencher, now Number 10 had to fear his next excoriating analysis of where Tony Blair had gone wrong.
His colleagues are all over the airwaves this weekend paying tribute to him as one of the largest figures of his political generation. Knowing Robin Cook, he would probably remark drily that, while he’s sure they are sincere, it is just a pity that they left it until now to say so.
