POLITICS
Is Mr Cook the worst Foreign Secretary of all time? Only before lunch
BRUCE ANDERSON
In private life, Robin Cook's real failing was meanness of spirit. As regards adultery, Lloyd George treated his wife Margaret at least as badly as Mrs Cook was treated, but the scarlet sins of the great are easier to live with than the peevish peccadilloes of the little. It is impossible to imagine Lloyd George dumping his wife because the prime minister's press secretary had given him an ultimatum. Margaret Cook's book is not an ennobling work and has lain her open to the charge of being warped and bit- ter. Who made her so?
In response to the Cook affair, there are signs of a greater maturity in public judg- ment; a willingness to accept that a man can be a bad husband and a good politician. If this new public attitude endures, it is to be welcomed, for down the centuries, adulter- ers have made an indispensable contribution to the government of Great Britain. So a tol- erance of adultery is a necessary condition of good government; this does not mean, how- ever, that all adulterers are good governors. The real criticism of Mr Cook is not that he is a rotten husband, but that he is a rotten Foreign Secretary.
Despite his undoubted ability, he has nei- ther the mental powers nor the working habits that a foreign secretary requires. Foreign policy is a hard study. A foreign secretary must deal in large concepts; he also has to master small details and to have a constant feel for the cunning of events. His long working days should consist of the continued play of intellect upon informa- tion. He needs to learn to use the awesome resources and expertise at his disposal in the Foreign Office, without being over- whelmed by them. Ultimately, he has to clarify his mind to make the lonely judg- ment that no official can make for him; what is the national interest?
Mr Cook has done none of this. He was too busy being suspicious of his officials' motives to learn what they had to teach him. He never developed proper working routines; at times, it was impossible for his private office to tell when he had not done his work. The FO did not expect him to be an easy boss, but it had been impressed by the intellectual powers he had displayed in opposition; ruefully impressed, indeed, by the use that he had made of the Scott Report. The officials were determined to convince him that he could command not only their diligence, but their loyalty. They would have taken all the trouble it took on his behalf; the only trouble he took was to forfeit their respect.
The royal visit to India set the tone, and not just his dodging off in the middle so that he could spend time with his mistress, squalid and unworthy though that was. Before the trip began, Mr Cook was briefed on Kashmir. Kashmir is a difficult intellectu- al problem, but as it is an insoluble political problem, the difficulties hardly matter. All the visiting politician needs to do is to mas- ter the stock responses that will keep him out of trouble. As far as the FO could tell, Robin Cook had done that, but they had overestimated his powers of concentration, just as they had underestimated his idleness and his arrogance. The bearded wonder promptly blundered into every minefield in sight, with predictable consequences. There ensued another consequence, equally pre- dictable to those who had studied the gen- erosity of the Cook nature; he blamed his officials for his mistakes.
David Gore-Booth has had a mixed press, but also an unfair and inaccurate one. Anyone reading some of the accounts might assume him to be high-handed and abrasive; this is nonsense. A man of easy mien and silken charm, he is nothing like as abrasive as the David Hannays and Robin Renwicks of recent ambassadorial vintage. David Gore-Booth has a sense of his own worth, certainly, but why not? He has done some service to the state and the Foreign Secretary ought to know it. Nor would he have been easily provoked. His father, who was Permanent Secretary, had to deal with George Brown, so there is a family tradi- tion of coping with difficult foreign secre- taries. Sir David was only driven beyond coping by captious denigration of him and other officials. His final despatch was read with great enthusiasm throughout the FO and has given a much-needed boost to morale; the first one for 20 months.
Post-Kashmir, Robin Cook persisted in error, asking the Rumanian foreign minister if his country had a common boundary with Greece; this is a Foreign Secretary who does not begin to know how to conduct himself. Then there was Sandline. Mr Cook was fortunate in the choice of Sir Thomas Legg to conduct the enquiry; the Legg Report goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid the imputation of malfeasance. But in so doing, it leaves one crucial question unanswered. The Joint Intelligence Com- mittee must have known about Sandline's involvement in Sierra Leone, and must have told the Foreign Secretary and the PM. Surely even Robin Cook reads JIC Reports; then again, there are no sureties about Mr Cook's reading, except the Racing Post.
These JIC-related questions remain unan- swered, and with them, one of the greatest mysteries of post-war British politics remains unsolved: Sir John Kerr's abject performance in front of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. As David Gore-Booth discovered on Tuesday, the worst threat that committee can offer is a brace of humour- less new Labour harpies chuntering away on behalf of political correctness and against common sense. Yet John Ken, the most nimble and quick-witted of men, behaved as if his tongue was encased in concrete whilst his brain was addled. There is only one remotely plausible explanation; that after much agonising as to where his duty lay, Sir John had decided with the greatest reluc- tance that he ought to cover up for some- one. We may yet find out who it was.
Mr Cook's problems do not just stem from faults of character: by 1997 he had forgotten how to think about foreign affairs. He used to have clear views on the subject, including withdrawal from the EEC and unilateral nuclear disarmament. By the mid-Eighties, he had decided that these opinions were no longer convenient, but instead of rethinking his world view, he gave up having one, and relied solely on his debaters' sharpness. So by the time he acquired his great office, his only intellectual guidance-system was a social chip.
Mr Cook the public figure had been hol- lowed out, long before Margaret Cook anatomised the hollow man in private life. He is going to try to cling to office and as for the loss of dignity, he has no idea what the word means. Yet Mr Blair has now told us that Mr Cook is one of the best foreign secretaries for many years. But we can tell what Tony Blair really thinks of Robin Cook, from the attempt to appoint Peter Mandelson as a special envoy to Europe. Mr Blair knows perfectly well that this superb Foreign Secretary of his cannot be trusted to do his job.
It would however be an exaggeration to claim that Robin Cook is the worst foreign secretary of all time. After lunch, George Brown was as bad.
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