It was a sad day yesterday with the premature death of the former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook (see reflections in The Guardian, the Sunday Herald and The Times).
I had the great pleasure to meet him once, back in my (very) brief membership of my university Labour Club, and have had a high opinion of him ever since. Most impressive on that occasion was his fierce intelligence, an innate ability to cut to the heart of an issue and dissect it before his audience, without the distraction of extraneous waffle so prevalent in most politicians (particularly, it has to be said, with TB's New Labour). He actually seemed to think about what he was saying, as if examining freshly his own attitude towards an issue before commenting on it, and actually taking aboard what others said to him. Having had the misfortune over the years to witness some of the automatons passing as politicians these days, with their pre-programmed answers triggered upon the utterance of a key word, regardless of what has actually been asked of them, I can assure you that this is something of a rarity these days...
While his time in high office may not have lived up to his own expectations, let alone those of others (we're still waiting for that ethical foreign policy - any day now will do), he proved himself, especially on the issue of Iraq, to be that most unusual of species: the politician who puts integrity ahead of personal position and power.
With his death, and the continuing ill-health of the marvellous Mo Mowlam, it has been a bad week for British politics: we are sadly lacking in characters as strong and committed as these two, and the nation is the worse for such an absence.
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