Robin Cook:
Sunday Herald - 30 March 2003
He has had 'not a moment of regret' since walking away from 20 uninterrupted years on Labour's front bench. Indeed, events of the 13 days since Robin Cook split with his Cabinet colleagues over the Iraq war have been confirming his fears.
'Every time I look at the news now and see the cost in human life and suffering, I still find myself asking: 'why'?' Why did Washington believe this war would be won so easily? Why, he asks, was there such urgency to go to war this month, when America and Britain has long known of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons potential -- having sold them to Saddam 20 years ago?
There is an admission of political reality: 'We have to see this through, having started. There can be no question at this stage of letting Saddam off the hook. But if you go back over the history of the past nine months, we perhaps should have been more robust with [President] Bush in making it clear that when we sent inspectors in, this was for real. We wanted the inspectors to have the chance to finish the job, not to be sent in there to prepare public opinion for military action.
'There was an odd response in Washington, whenever [chief weapons inspector] Hans Blix reported progress. Instead of welcoming it and being glad of that, there was consternation because this weakened the case for war. It seemed a perverse response to the progress inspectors made.'
The Livingston MP has this week faced his own personal tragedy, seeing his 91-year-old mother, Christina, buried next to his father's grave. But in taking a break from clearing her Midlothian home to talk to the Sunday Herald, that mumbling voice and those rapier-sharp words, which Tony Blair must now fear on the backbenches behind him more than any other, are warning that the end of hostilities in Iraq, when that comes, will force a choice the Prime Minister has been dreading.
'The crucial question facing Britain now is whether we want to be a major figure in Europe or a minor figure marooned in the mid-Atlantic. Are we going to be in the lead in Europe, or a follower of Bush? Self- respect as a nation with an immense history and also our own self-interest, points to only one answer. Our future lies with Europe not in the mid-Atlantic.'
Europe, he says, and not the Washington administration, is where we find people who share our values. 'There is a whole range of issues on which the Bush administration has demonstrated it does not share our approach to building an international community: the Inter national Criminal Court, where it's outside; global warming, where America is outside the Kyoto protocol; banning landmines where the US has refused to sign up; fair trade, where the US has imposed a tariff on British steel; and [last September's global summit in] Johannesburg, where we found it difficult to get the Americans to sign up to our commitment to make sure the world has clean water and safe sewage.
'There's a big agenda there, because if we're going to be the broker between America and Europe, between America and the international community, we've got to make some more progress with the Bush administration to get them signed up to accept the kind of civilised, ordered structures which we want in international relations.'
Cook chooses and repeats the word 'community' with care. He knows that is at the heart of his party leader's view of politics and the world, and the damage to the world and European communities must weigh heavy on the premier's shoulders. The former foreign secretary damns with faint praise when he remembers that one of Blair's 'tremendous achievements was to make Britain respected in Europe as an equal partner of France and Germany'. He does not have to spell out that such diplomatic advances are now in headlong retreat: 'It's not going to be easy to get back to that position we were in a few months ago, but it's very much in Britain's interest that we do.'
So too with the United Nations, following its sidelining by the US and UK governments. Cook believes the choices about the future of Iraq after the war will be crucial: 'It's already clear the Iraqis will not be comfortable with any foreign power occupying them. They are more likely to accept the process of transition if it is the UN running the show. It has not simply got to be a brand of approval from the UN: it has to be there ... hands on, in charge, taking the decisions.'
There is another crunch point there for Blair, which he was struggling to address in his Camp David talks last week, and which is firmly at odds with the Bush administration. Cook argues that Blair should have been big enough to say 'no' to the White House's diplomatic impatience, but he is now making it clear the Prime Minister will have to be robust in asserting Britain's national interests when under pressure from the US to go its own post-war way in running Iraq.
He gives significance to the splits on the American right over its unilateralism, citing the current president's father and predecessor in the White House, and his respected advisers James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, who have been more critical of the current team. And he points to the state of public opinion in the US, with 67% expecting their economy to get worse, the highest level of pessimism in 10 years -- observing with satisfaction that that polling figure is the best indicator of Dubya's re-election chances next year.
Perhaps the most damaging allegation from the statement made as Cook departed from his job as Leader of the House of Commons, was that Saddam probably has no weapons of mass destruction 'in the normally understood sense of the term -- that is a weapon you can deliver over a long range against a strategic city target'. As a man familiar with the most sensitive of intelligence reports, at least until June 2001 when he was moved from the Foreign Office, Cook has this weekend gone further in undermining Blair's main reason for invading Iraq, saying that he never saw any intelligence that suggests the Iraqi dictator is so armed, though he probably does have biological toxins and chemical weapon shells.
Cook's 'freedom to speak and freedom to write' spells danger for the government from its most senior backbencher. 'Life is full of opportunities and I'm looking forward to that with some satisfaction,' he says ominously, adding that yes, he does mean political opportunities rather than his beloved horse-racing ones, and no, the Scottish parliament does not beckon. 'I shall happily continue to represent Livingston at Wesminster so long as Livingston is happy to send me there.'
One subject far from Iraq on which he is already saying he will take up cudgels is in restarting his stalled front-bench efforts to reform the House of Lords: 'It is an affront to the good people of Britain if we end up with a second chamber of parliament in which they have no say. It has to be largely or wholly elected. I made that case strongly within government, and I will most certainly make that case all the more strongly from outside government.'
But for now, he wants to stress that he backs Tony Blair's leadership and Britain's armed forces: 'I want the British force to succeed, as quickly as possible with as few casualties as possible, and I want them to come back soon and safe.' He has already warned the Prime Minister that bridges will have to be rebuilt between the leadership and a party put under severe strain by the war. Cook hopes to play his part, but is not yet saying how: 'I can make more of a contribution as a senior figure on the backbenches than I might be able to play within the Cabinet.' Tony Blair would do well to beware of such political 'friendly fire'.
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