spinoff

The Prime Minister is a man of action not words. He has proven this countless times to us, who elected him. He wasted no time in 1997 on trashing clause four, and establishing the Labour party as the new conservatives, paving the way for the implosion of the traditional party of the right.

 

He wasted no time making friends with Mr Clinton, but at the same time making Europeans feel they had an ally in forging ahead with a new European way, expansion, the euro et all. Everybody knew where he was coming from.
He changed the way the economy was run and put at the head of it a man whose life has been spent preparing for running such an economy, and whose brain is the size of the Sudan.

 

He also appointed many other good men, ex Socialist Worker proffering, oft-marching, northern, even blind! men and women to his cabinet for revolution to put behind ‘those years of boom and bust’ and make Britain a force to be reckoned with.  

 

One of these men was Robin Cook. Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, Cook was a man who was amazing because, if nothing else, he managed to get at least two women to have sex with him despite looking like the original poisoned dwarf. But his personal life aside, he was a talented politician who commanded great respect from political friends and enemies alike. However, Jacky Straw wanted his job, and Cook did not always say the right thing, so he went: little Jacky was much better at reading out the script on the telly.

 

But Cook, although still in shock from his sudden ejection, still went on to make one of the best leaders of the House of Commons in decades. His understanding of parliamentary procedure, and what the Commons is actually for was acute, and under his auspices business was conducted very nearly sensibly.

 

Most importantly Cook was committed, more than any other Labour politician was or will be, to the reform of the House of Lords. Blair began the ‘reform’ years ago and promptly swept the problem under the carpet because it was his personal project to get enough Labour peers in there so they were no longer trampled by Tories and Independents every single time there was a divisive issue to discuss. The entire foxhunting debacle never would have happened if he could have managed it sooner, but this system of patronage has ensured he got his way. The Conservatives no longer have a majority over there.

 

Go democracy.

 

Cook’s vision for the second chamber was visionary and he pushed and pushed to try and finish what the Prime Minister had half heartedly started, but sadly he got nowhere. His concern for the way our democracy works, in a country without a written constitution, was ignored, and nobody listened.

 

Other voices were shouting louder, and shouting for war.  

 

Blair, as is increasingly the case, has had his eyes set overseas, and his closeness to Bush, as we all sadly found last month, has not earned him many friends at home.

 

Cook quit over the war, but his anger was over many things, over Blair’s refusal to listen to the people around him, or his refusal to sort out the pig’s ear of legislation which was being forced through the mangler at the time. It seems that Blair had bigger fish to fry.

 

Blair is a man of action, not words, and he doesn’t need to say anything this time either. His absence, due to his holiday, from Mr Cook’s funeral, says it all.