Any hope of Labour returning to the Left died with Robin
Tony Blair's advisers often quote the feminist writer Gloria Steinem's aphorism that today everything political is personal. There are few politicians, however, who prove that the personal can also be the political. Robin Cook was one who did.
As the ablest and most articulate spokesman for the Labour Left, he symbolised the path not followed by his party. Through his resignation from the Government over the war in Iraq, he became an emblem of Old Labour's frustration with Mr Blair. His death is therefore not just a personal tragedy for his family, it is also a political event. It is now less likely than ever that Labour will return to its traditional socialist roots.
There was nothing New Labour about Mr Cook. With his ginger beard, his love of horse racing and his liking for a dram (or 10) of whisky, he was the opposite of a clean-cut, mineral water-sipping Blairite clone. He preferred lamb rogan josh to rabbit polenta, trade unionists to businessmen, the Scottish Highlands to Tuscany. During the recent general election campaign, he came back to help the party as part of a strategy called Operation Hairy Lefty. It was a label that could have been invented for him.
A brilliant parliamentarian, Mr Cook, like the Prime Minister, wanted a "new style of politics" - but his version involved reforming the House of Lords and introducing proportional representation, rather than installing a sofa in the study of Number 10. As foreign secretary, his "ethical foreign policy" meant clamping down on arms sales, not toppling Saddam Hussein.
Instead of touting a pager, he had an old-fashioned red telephone installed on his desk with a hotline to his counterpart in the United States - he used to joke that the first time it rang, the caller tried to order a takeaway pizza. When all around him were throwing out government-owned watercolours in favour of Cool Britannia modern paintings, he replaced a picture of a maharaja with a giant gilded mirror. His vanity and prickly manner meant that he was unable to erect a political big tent.
On policy, he was frequently at odds with Mr Blair, preferring differentiation to triangulation. Even before Labour had won power in 1997, he said, privately, that the party's manifesto was fine - just so long as it was never actually implemented. He opposed ID cards, university top-up fees and the introduction of market forces into the public services. He would almost certainly have led the charge against the Prime Minister's recent anti-terrorist proposals. In a recent speech to the Left-wing pressure group Compass, he argued that Labour would only win the next election if it abandoned its fascination with "political cross-dressing" and rediscovered a "radical values base".
Mr Cook was the only credible figurehead of the Left - in recent years, he deployed the forensic debating skills once used against the Conservatives during the arms to Iraq debate against his own party. There is no one else who can take over this role - Frank Dobson has the beard but lacks the intellect, Clare Short shares his views on Iraq, but fails the subtlety test. Mr Cook's death will therefore alter the balance of power in the Labour Party at a time when its future is up for grabs with the impending departure of Mr Blair. There are implications not just for the Prime Minister but also for his likely successor, Gordon Brown.
Recently, Mr Cook abandoned his decade-long rivalry with the Chancellor and started campaigning for his fellow Scot to assume the Labour leadership at the earliest opportunity. He did so because, like many other MPs and activists, he believed that Mr Brown shared his views that the party needed to put clear, red water between it and the Conservatives. There is, in fact, little evidence that this is the case.
Although the Chancellor has in the past flaunted his True Labour credentials, in an attempt to differentiate himself from the New Labour Mr Blair, he has, since this year's election, come to the conclusion that electoral success comes from retaining the centre ground. At a recent internal briefing, Labour's pollster Greg Cook produced an analysis showing that if the party regained two per cent of its vote from the Liberal Democrats but lost two per cent to the Conservatives, then it would lose power. Mr Brown has been struck by the need to keep the middle classes, won over to Labour by Mr Blair, on side should he become leader.
I think it extremely unlikely that Mr Brown would, as prime minister, have given Mr Cook the Cabinet job he wanted - that of Chancellor. Had he brought him back into the government at all, it would have been in a relatively junior position where his Left-wing instincts could have been contained.
There is also little chance that Mr Brown would have chosen Mr Cook as his deputy - he is more likely to try to balance his own dour Scottish tax-and-spend reputation with a southern, centre-ground running mate. As the Chancellor himself said during the election campaign, he is New Labour and he will to a great extent be the continuity candidate to succeed Mr Blair. Mr Cook - like many others on his wing of the Labour Party - would have been deeply disappointed by a Brown premiership.
And yet, had he lived, he would, as one of Mr Brown's original supporters, inevitably have had a hold over him, not only because of his own reputation but also because of the strand of opinion he represents. His influence would have been greater over Mr Brown than it ever was over Mr Blair because their political background and instincts are more similar.
It would have been more difficult for Mr Brown to bat away criticisms from one of his most high-profile allies than it was for Mr Blair to shrug off complaints from a man who had resigned from his Cabinet. That will not now be. It will be far easier for Mr Brown, like Mr Blair, to ignore the Left because its best exponent has gone.
"There are few politicians who are irreplaceable," Lord Kinnock said yesterday. "Robin Cook was irreplaceable." It is said that all political careers end in failure. Certainly, Robin Cook's views have been defeated in government. However, as an opposition politician - whether to the Conservatives or to his own party - he was a success.
