Having decided to go, he did so with characteristic gravitas and style, pointedly declining to cross the line which separates honourable dissent from embittered treachery.Ĭook had good reason to understand the poisonous realities of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Whether he would have taken precisely the same position if he had remained as foreign secretary remains an open question. But he adapted with elan to the relatively mundane post of leader of the house, and it is by no means the least of his epitaphs that he remains the only serious politician who has tried to replace the corrupting system of patronage which underpins the House of Lords with a democratic chamber.Ĭook's resignation from the cabinet over the second Iraq war in 2003 came at a time when his Lords reforms had run into the prime ministerial buffers. He did not expect Tony Blair to move him from the job after the 2001 election, and was hurt both by the loss of that high office and the brutality of the execution. However, it was inevitable that declaring the advent of an 'ethical foreign policy' would invite constant efforts to find fault lines between rhetoric and reality, at the personal level as well as in his approach to issues. This was an unpleasant process which involved much trading of blocks of votes, and the fact that Cook emerged in prime position simply reflected the fact that no MP with the slightest interest in advancing Labour as an effective opposition would have wished him to be anywhere but in the front line.Ĭook's intelligence and grasp of issues made him an impressive foreign secretary when Labour won the 1997 election, highly regarded on the international stage. Nobody contributed more, during the long years of opposition, to the rebuilding of morale, the restoration of Labour's credibility as a potential party of government or the shredding of Tory reputations.Ĭook was never much of an organiser on his own behalf, yet regularly topped the shadow cabinet poll of MPs during the opposition years.

If Tony Blair was the Labour leader whom the Tories learned to fear in the country, Cook was the Labour frontbencher whom they had long since come to fear and loathe in the Commons.

Rocking robin cooking