Robin Cook is dead

[chickenfeet]

I only met Robin Cook once and I'm sure the obituary writers will tell you all about Cook the politician but I think the little incident I'm about to relate says something about a man who was genuine and not full of his own importance as so many politicians are.

It must have been in 1977 or 78 and Robin had been doing a lunchtime talk to the Labour Club at Durham, of which I was then the Chairman. It finished around 2pm as these things are wont to and in those days there was almost nowhere one could get anything resembling lunch in Durham at that hour so we had recourse to the general unappetising cafeteria in Dunelm House. There was next to nothing left to eat but there was a single, solitary pie which I was more than happy to concede to my guest but he absolutely insisted on sharing it with me. I just can't see the Right Honourable Member for Sedgefield doing that.

Comments

[coughingbear]

That's a lovely story. I was bouncing around about the cricket at close of play, then the news came on and this was a horrid shock. Robin Cook has been a politician I've always rather liked. Certainly in recent years I've felt he could be relied on to ask the government awkward questions and articulate some of the discomfort many of us feel about its policies. I wonder who will do that now.

(There's an obituary up at the Guardian now; they say he was an 'indifferent' Foreign Secretary. Oddly, I know a few people who work at the FCO - not at the highest levels though - who always spoke highly of having him as their minister.)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I suspect that "storied" Foreign Secretaries are the ones who send lots of gunboats.

[rahael.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh! I totally didn't hear this until I read it just now..

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the anecdote. I'm feeling very sad too. One of the top government people who really had the guts to stand up to Blair over the Iraq war...