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| Robin Cook in St James Gardens after his 2003 resignation. Photograph: Gary Carlton |
My hero: Robin Cook by John Kampfner
Robin Cook's refusal to schmooze prevented him from getting to the very top, but he left his mark
Friday 3 October 2014
Only the credulous or the craven might consider a British politician their hero. I plead guilty, but only on one count. It is nearly a decade since Robin Cook's sudden death. Parliament was robbed of a rare voice of principle, a man who combined erudition and acerbic wit with a forensic ability to assimilate and distil information to devastating effect.
Cook's political career was punctuated by great moments, from the demolition of John Major over the Scott inquiry in 1996 to the demolition of his own Labour government, again over Iraq, in 2003. His intolerance of Whitehall deceit was matched by impatience towards those who couldn't keep up with him. Cook's refusal to schmooze – he would much rather go to the horse-racing – prevented him from getting to the very top, but he left his mark in a way that many of his colleagues and time-servers have not.
He may be best remembered for leading the opposition to Tony Blair's great foreign misadventure, but Cook was actually an advocate of military action in defence of human rights, while trying (and largely failing) to curb arms sales. A fierce advocate of centre-left values, he was at the same time rarely tribal, and embraced the unfashionable cause of electoral reform.
I remember a trip we made not long after he'd been made foreign secretary. Fresh from giving a public dressing-down to Croatia's nationalist president, he flew back to Scotland and straight to a constituency surgery. He spent a couple of hours listening to a long line of concerns ranging from domestic violence to leaky roofs to housing benefit, writing down various points long-hand in his notebook. He was painstaking in the detail, but he saw in these examples a bigger picture. Even during this so-called time of plenty, long before the financial crash, he warned of the dangers of society's stratification. He was always very aware of inequality.
I was thinking of Cook while putting the finishing touches to my study of 2,000 years of the global super-rich. Having been immersed in acquisitiveness, narcissism and the odd show of noblesse oblige, it is worth remembering that it doesn't have to be this way.
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