British politician and the architect of the
ethical foreign policy which he intended the
Labour government of
1997 to exemplify. Promoted sideways after his party won its second term in
2001, he returned to prominence as the self-appointed spokesmen of Labour
backbenchers, and made himself the symbol of their discontent with his resignation from the
Cabinet in March
2003 as
war on Iraq approached.
Cook was born in
1946 in the
Lanarkshire town of
Bellshill; his accent has remained pronounced to this day, leading to speculation whenever his future is in doubt that he could always be shifted further north into a
sinecure in the
Scottish Parliament even though, in the late 1970s, he was an outspoken opponent of proposals for Scottish
devolution.
Educated at
Edinburgh University, he entered
Westminster in
1974 and aligned himself with
Tony Blair's faction after the untimely death in
1994 of Labour's leader
John Smith, the man widely expected to lead his party back into government after fifteen years of
Conservative rule.
Treaty of Granita
In the aftermath of Smith's death, Blair is popularly supposed to have made a pact at a trendy
Islington restaurant,
Granita, with his former mentor
Gordon Brown: Blair would head up the next election challenge, take Labour into a 'historic' second term and step aside, at some point in the second term, in favour of his dour
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Ever since the victory of 1997, the existence and the details of any such Treaty of Granita have been endlessly picked apart by British political correspondents; for Cook, a long-standing rival of Gordon Brown ever since the devolution debate, the agreement persuaded him not to challenge Blair for the vacant Labour leadership, despite encouragement from many of what remained Labour's left wing after the hard-fought modernisation of the party under Smith and, previously,
Neil Kinnock.
As a Blairite, Cook disappointed his leftist backers by supporting his leader's assault on
Clause 4, the commitment to workers' ownership of the means of production which had become emblematic of Labour's loyalty, or otherwise, to
socialism.
Cook became the shadow spokesman on foreign affairs, and made his name as a parliamentarian in
1996 when he dissected the Conservative government's handling of the
arms to Iraq affair revealed by the
Scott Inquiry, after being allowed only three hours to digest Scott's report. Although he was named Debater of the Year by
The Spectator magazine, no friend of the Labour party, he would apparently have preferred some responsibility for
Treasury affairs, but found the portfolio Brown's personal fiefdom.
Ethical Foreign Policy
However, his experience as shadow foreign minister made him the obvious candidate for the
Foreign Office itself in 1997: his tenure there was, perhaps inevitably, judged on the amount of faith he kept with his euphoric declaration that Labour, in sharp contrast to the Conservatives, would follow an ethical foreign policy. His decision to allow the sale of sixteen
Hawk fighter jets to the government of
Indonesia, not particularly known for similar ethical commitments, was seized upon by his opponents in the media as an early example of Blairite
hypocrisy.
Cook also managed to offend the
Indian prime minister,
Inder Kumar Gujral, when he appeared to make an unwelcome offer of British mediation between India and
Pakistan in the
Kashmir crisis, prompting Gujmal to complain that Britain was a 'third-rate power poking its nose in' and, as the former colonial ruler, ought now to leave Kashmir well alone.
His determination to reinstall the
Sierra Leonean president
Tejan Kabbah in
2000, embroiling the United Kingdom in the double dealings of the mercenary corporation
Sandline International, also won him criticism, but the gaffes might not have been enough to bring about his surprise dismissal from the Foreign Office in the 2001 reshuffle if not for his colourful personal life.
Notwithstanding his appearance of a ginger
garden gnome, Cook has often been a noted womaniser whose long-term affair with his former secretary,
Gaynor Regan, finally sent his ex-wife
Margaret into
wronged woman mode with her highly revealing
1999 autobiography,
A Slight and Delicate Creature. The slight and delicate creature followed up her bestseller in
2002 with an examination of male leadership from
Lincoln to
Stalin,
Lords of Creation: The Demented World of Men in Power.
Although Cook's new role as
Leader of the House kept him in the Cabinet, it was nonetheless a demotion in all but name, asking him to concern himself with arcane
parliamentary procedure instead of the cut and thrust of international diplomacy.
Leader of the House
Even so, he attempted to make the most of his new
portfolio, and over the summer of
2002 introduced a package of reforms to the working hours of the
House of Commons intended to do away with Westminster's traditional late-night sittings and, in the management buzzword of the time, make Parliament more
family friendly. A number of MPs, however, resented the fact that the new timetable would interfere with their lucrative
second jobs and, more altruistically, give the representatives of far-flung constituencies less time in their own locality.
Cook was also turned to by Labour backbenchers anxious that Blair's particular plans to reform the
House of Lords, which the Prime Minister would have preferred to be almost an entirely appointed chamber, would lead to an
upper house filled with the so-called
Tony's cronies. Cook had publicly committed himself to a mostly elected second chamber, whereas the Blair proposal would have restricted the elected peers to only 20% of the chamber's membership.
The ongoing debate on Lords reform, though, became overshadowed by the prospect of war on Iraq without a second
United Nations resolution, a conflict over which many of Labour's
rank and file were profoundly anxious. After a million-strong demonstration in London on
February 15, 2003, in fact, they and Cook might have believed they had more claim to the popular touch than the hawkish, almost messianic Blair, reprising the ecstatic interventionism which had seen him through the
Kosovo crisis in 1999 but being denounced as '
Bush's poodle' by the left.
After the
Azores summit on
March 16, 2003, attended by Bush, Blair and the loyal Spanish prime minister
José María Aznar, appeared to rule out a diplomatic solution to the crisis, Cook confirmed several weeks of press speculation by resigning from the Cabinet the next day, becoming the first Labour minister to do so and beating the Cabinet's professional
contrarian, the international development secretary
Clare Short, to the tape.
His letter of resignation emphasised his anger that Blair's enthusiasm for the war, greatly at odds with the scepticism of the French president
Jacques Chirac, might risk British isolation within the
European Union. His
resignation speech itself, delivered to a packed House of Commons late into the evening of
March 17 was more
coruscating yet: delivered with all the
panache of his Scott Inquiry debate, it contained thinly veiled attacks in passing on the security policy of Israeli prime minister
Ariel Sharon and the veracity of
George W. Bush's election in the first place.
The thought had been publicly aired in the British media that week that Blair might be forced to resign should the Iraqi conflict not turn out to be the lightning-fast display of
shock and awe that
the Pentagon had envisaged. While Cook might not appear his natural successor, his resignation seemed to be a calculation that he might become the focus of the backbenchers' resentment of Blair and have some say in the election of Blair's replacement.
Thanks to TallRoo for the resignation letter: read it at http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,916145,00.html