Not a party to deception
Paul Routledge
THE POINT OF DEPARTURE by Robin Cook Simon & Schuster, £20, pp. 368, ISBN 0743252551 The first thing that strikes one when reading Robin Cook's revelations is that his diary was not written for posterity. It is designed for immediate consumption. The foreign secretary must have been writing his apologia pro vita sua at the Cabinet table. As pre-emptive retaliation, it succeeds admirably, not least because he freely interlards the daily narrative with 20-20 hindsight commentaries that take up a third of the text.
Cook is determined to emerge as the man of honour from the debacle of Iraq: the only Cabinet minister to put his money where his mouth was, and therefore worthy of a permanent place in the pantheon of Labour heroes, But he is unwilling to take the obvious next step: to destabilise Tony Blair, the architect of our illegal war. Perhaps he still has hopes of returning to high office, or of acting as kingmaker when the Prime Minister quits or finally succumbs to his heart complaint.
The former foreign secretary is plainly obsessed with Blair, and offers many sideways glances that could only have come from years of close proximity to Teflon Tony. We learn that Blair is a compulsive shoe-polisher, a habit Cook attributes to his public school upbringing. That Blair is always late is well known to every lobby correspondent, but we did not know until Cookie told us that the Prime Minister defied advice not to get involved with the Hinduja brothers. As might be gathered from his countenance, Blair is also a 'sunworshipper' and likes to keep his guests in the shade while conducting talks in the rose garden of No. 10.
Discovering these nuggets is a bit like panning for gold in the first half of the
book, which deals largely with reform of the Commons and the Lords, both subjects dear to Cook's heart, but which could usefully have been left to another volume. Or not touched at all.
Only when the war against Iraq begins to loom large over the political scene does this book become required reading. As early as March 2002, Blair is privately warning Labour's Parliamentary Committee that 'I cannot offer the comfort that no military action will be taken'. Plainly, Mr No-Reverse-Gear was set on war from the very beginning, knowing that Bush intended to invade and not knowing how to disengage. So much for the mantra, repeated right until Christmas, that `no decision had been taken'.
In August, while the SAS was gearing up for action and plans were being drawn up for the mobilisation of the largest British expeditionary force since the Korean war. Cook was trying to drive the Prime Minister into allowing Parliament to vote on hostilities, He succeeded, but by then the die was cast. Blair was 'always candid about his intention to be with Bush when the war began'. Yet, and now famously, it was clear from conversation with Cook that by March 2003 Blair did not believe that Saddam Hussein could fire weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. In other words, we were deliberately deceived.
Cook resolved in mid-February that he would go if Blair went to war without a second UN resolution authorising invasion, He offers a lyrical account of how he came to his decision, rambling in the wintry reed beds of the Norfolk Broads with Gaynor, in the constant company of waterfowl, wild geese and hovering hawks. Very old Labour, and preferable to the mountain of lies he was being asked to climb in Whitehall.
In terms of public diplomacy, he argues, the attack on Iraq has been the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the foot. Blair imagined that his big war would cast him in the heroic mould of post-Falklands Thatcher. It simply did not happen. Instead, Iraq had a 'profound and permanent impact' on the public mood and triggered a crisis of trust, the absence of which infects the credibility of the government across the board, including the domestic agenda. Hear, hear.
Cook insists that Blair 'must stop telling us he was right, when plainly he was wrong'. Which just goes to show, you can be close to a man for years and never really fathom him. Blair cannot stop lying, because one admission of error would bring the whole rotten edifice crashing down. Still. Cook has rendered a fine service with his disclosures, which reputedly brought him £400,000, the rewards of putting his mouth where the money is. What a pity that his publisher was too lazy, or in too much of a hurry, to furnish an index.
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