Robin Cook: The face that could launch a Labour rebellion

Tony Blair is worried about Robin Cook. Worried that Cook is a rebel looking for a cause. Might the Leader of the House of Commons quit to become leader of those Labour rebels in the Commons who have the gravest misgivings about waging war on Iraq? Would the man who, as Foreign Secretary, declared an "ethical dimension" to foreign policy now pursue that lofty aim from the backbenches?

An apparently well-sourced article in The Spectator last month by the editor of Tribune, Mark Seddon, stated that "such are Cook's doubts about the wisdom of a war against Iraq that the only role he is prepared to countenance for Britain is to allow the US Air Force to use the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean as a staging post". There followed a flurry of speculation about whether Cook or Clare Short, the Secretary of State for International Development, were more likely to resign from the Government. Cook's forensic debating skills had eviscerated many a minister in the last Conservative government; could they be turned against his former cabinet colleagues?

Some of those around Blair wonder whether Cook's supposed taste for the trappings of office and his future ambitions would outweigh his moral and political objections to Blair's apparent willingness to follow the line set by the Bush administration. And what are the chances that he would simply be seen as a busted flush, another embittered former minister who resented the loss of a job he loved – in Cook's case the foreign secretaryship, which he was sacked from after the last election? His enemies say he has "no political base and he's isolated".

Cook certainly has the intellectual ability and parliamentary skills to be another Nye Bevan, the thorn in the side of Labour leaders in the 1950s and romantic hero of the left; he could plausibly campaign for the euro and for John Smith-style social justice. But wouldn't Cook's inability to suffer slower minds gladly hold him back in his bid to be the champion of the United Nations and the conscience of the Labour Party?

As the Labour leadership faces what could still be a rough ride at the party conference next week, such calculations can be safely left to one side, for the time being at least. Those close to Cook pronounce him well-satisfied with the cabinet meeting last Monday. Cook, in other words, is happy now that he has got what he set out to achieve: a full cabinet meeting to discuss the situation, a recall of Parliament, a full debate in the chamber of the Commons and the promise of a substantive parliamentary vote on military action at an "appropriate" moment.

The Leader of the Commons is also said to be pleased with way that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, pledged to resolve the crisis through the UN, and he congratulated Straw on his speech. He gives great credit to Blair for persuading George Bush to speak at the UN General Assembly. The accounts of Monday's cabinet session that have seeped out suggest that it was far from a case of Blair knocking his critics into line, with the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, making colleagues aware of the prospect of a prolonged economic slump that would follow a long period of crisis and military action. Cook seems to be winning the argument.

Yet there could still be a breaking point for him if Bush and Blair bypass the UN. In the Commons last week Blair pointedly refused to rule out military action if the UN failed to disarm Saddam. In which case Cook just might want to consider his position. In an interview last week he was asked about resignation if Blair backed Bush in a war that was not supported by the UN. He replied that "what I am doing in the Government is something that I believe is important and that I find very rewarding and satisfying" – which is not exactly an emphatic rebuttal, and those close to him have refused to speculate on what that situation might lead to. Indeed, one can wonder about how satisfying Cook's present role really is.

As Leader of the Commons, he has been at pains to stress his own credentials as a distinguished parliamentarian. These were skills that he had learnt early, honed at school and university debating societies. He made his first speech at the age of 11. Highly intelligent, one of the cleverest if not the cleverest members of the Cabinet, Cook's combination of brains and application is formidable. He had read most of Dickens's novels by the age of 10 and is a typical product of the best of the Scottish educational tradition, as is Gordon Brown; both are, in the words of Cook's ex-wife, Margaret, "primitively competitive"

Shortly before he became Foreign Secretary, and after three years as shadow Foreign Secretary, he was asked if he was disappointed at not having an economic portfolio (mainly due to the resistance of Gordon Brown). He acknowledged that, but quipped that "no one could say I haven't applied myself to it". Of course he had, and none of the criticisms he faced as Foreign Secretary were about his work rate or grip on the issues. But his reply betrayed his slight tendency towards being the smug school swot. Cook has never failed to do his homework, and the habit has served him well.

Cook's finest moment undoubtedly came in February 1996. After but two hours to skim through the Scott report on the arms-to-Iraq scandal, a 2,000-page document spread over five volumes, he demolished most of what was left of the Major government's credibility in a bravura performance at the dispatch box, one of the best of the decade. His popularity in Shadow Cabinet elections in the opposition years owed much to the way he impressed Labour MPs, who respected him whether they liked him or, more likely, loathed him.

And none loathed him more than Gordon Brown, a feeling that is lavishly reciprocated by Cook to such a degree that it was said that the two would cross the road to have a fight with each other. It is one of the longest-running feuds in British politics. Attempts to identify its origins read like the search for the source of the Nile. Brown's biographer, Paul Routledge, traces it to an incident in 1982 when Cook, by then a shadow spokesman, apparently failed to offer Brown his wholehearted support when Brown, not yet an MP, was campaigning for the chairmanship of the Scottish party. When Brown asked Cook for his backing over a Chinese meal in Soho, Cook replied: "I am sure you will do very well, Gordon."

Margaret Cook thinks "the seeds of enmity" were sown in the 1979 campaign for Scottish devolution – when Cook was on the "no" side and Brown ran the "yes" campaign.

Cook himself says that he wasn't aware of any problem until 1987, which may say more about him than anything. In recent times Cook has been happy to praise Brown's record as Chancellor, but the endorsement falls some way short of warmth: "He's run a very sound economy. I have a lot of respect for Gordon for what he has done. He is an enormously professional politician, and I respect that in a colleague".

Whatever the origins of the estrangement, and the periodic rumours of rapprochement, Cook's historically poor relationship with Brown suggests that he would not prosper under a Brown premiership. In the meantime, his old adversary would continue to veto his moving to an economic or important spending department.

So Cook would appear to be stuck with the leadership of the commons. He has had his successes in this position, and he genuinely believes in Parliament's role as a body that can scrutinise the executive. He rightly wants to make Parliament topical. But he was, however, embarrassingly defeated on a proposal to take the select committees out of the control of the whips, a move that was supposed to be a free vote but that the Labour and Tory whips extraordinarily conspired to defeat. It cannot have encouraged Cook and it is hard to believe that the day-to-day business of the Government's legislative programme and a protracted and debilitating battle with Lord Irvine about reform of the Lords will keep this powerful and ambitious intellect satisfied for the next three or four years.

Cook, 56 this year with a wife 11 years his junior, in the Commons since February 1974 and on the front bench more or less continuously since 1984, may not want to go on and on at Westminster, rebel leader or not. It seems unlikely that he would move north to take over as First Minister of Scotland, even if such a piece of overt reverse carpet-bagging were a practical proposition. In such a role he would be, in effect a supplicant to Brown as Chancellor, and that is not a role that Cook would fall into naturally. He could turn to a larger role abroad, possibly in the European Commission, possibly elsewhere. He could point to the example of many predecessors – David Owen's work in the Balkans, or Lord Carrington's and former defence secretary George Robertson's appointment as Nato Secretary General. That sort of role would not be beyond his talents; but he would not be nominated for it if he walked out of the Government.

But the really intriguing question is not what Robin might do next but what Robin might have been. It seems odd to think of him as Labour's lost leader, but it is worth contemplating. What if he had been better looking? What if his ex- wife had not made him a laughing stock by describing how she once found him "flat out on the dining room floor with a brandy bottle"? What if he had found it easier to make friends? What if he had just shaved the beard off, something he grew, according to Margaret Cook, as a student because he was secretly modelling himself on George Bernard Shaw?

Cook himself sometimes recognises his flaws. He says of his new wife, Gaynor. "I think that I owe her a lot in that she has an emotional intelligence to her. I think she has also taught me that one needs to understand and respond to other people's feelings, which possibly I was not good at before." Things might have been different if this clever school swot had discovered his emotional intelligence a little earlier.

Life Story

Born

Robert Finlayson Cook, 28 February 1946 Bellshill, Lanarkshire. Only son of Peter and Christina Cook (he was nicknamed Robin at school).

Family

Married Dr Margaret Whitmore, a medical consultant in 1969; they had two sons and divorced 1998; second marriage, to his assistant Gaynor Regan, in 1998.

Education

Aberdeen Grammar School; MA in English Literature at Edinburgh University; failed to finish his PhD on Dickens and the Victorian novel.

Political career

Edinburgh councillor 1971-74; MP for Edinburgh central 1974-83; MP for Livingstone since 1983; Opposition spokesman on economic affairs 1986-87; shadow Health Secretary 1987-92, shadow Trade and Industry Secretary 1992-94; shadow Foreign Secretary 1994-97; Foreign Secretary 1997-2001; Leader of the Commons 2001 to present; chairs the Modernisation of the House of Commons Select Committee.

Hobbies

Reading, horse-racing (has been a tipster).

He says

"My looks and personality are very much of the school swot; I'm not good-looking enough to be party leader".

They say

"His self-regard was easily punctured and his reaction was protracted and troublesome" – Margaret Cook.

"He has an almost childlike enthusiasm for jump-racing" – John McCririck.