Cook, Robin Finlayson

▪ 1997

      Once a left-wing socialist who believed that Great Britain should abandon nuclear weapons and leave NATO, Robin Cook had turned by 1996 into one of the key allies of Tony Blair, the reform-minded leader of Britain's Labour Party. Not only did Cook chair Labour's Policy Forum, which oversaw the process of replacing doctrinaire socialism with more modern, market-friendly policies, he also served as foreign secretary in Labour's shadow cabinet. There was every prospect that he would head the Foreign Ministry if Labour won the general election due to be held by May 1997 and thus take charge of the United Kingdom's relations with the United States, whose military strategy he had so fiercely opposed for much of the 1970s and early '80s.

      Cook was born in Belshill, Lanarkshire, near Glasgow, Scot., on Feb. 28, 1946, and was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and the University of Edinburgh. He was a teacher for five years before entering the House of Commons in 1974, at the age of 28, as Labour MP for Edinburgh Central. Because of boundary changes, he moved to become MP for nearby Livingston in 1983.

      For most of his first 10 years in Parliament, Cook was a left-wing MP. He also led the minority Labour faction that opposed his own party's plans to create an elected assembly in Scotland. In the 1980s, however, Cook started his journey toward the political centre. In 1981 he broke with Tony Benn, the unofficial leader of Labour's left wing, because he opposed Benn's decision to seek to wrest the deputy leadership of the Labour Party from Denis Healey, the moderate incumbent. In 1983 Cook managed Neil Kinnock's successful campaign to become leader of the Labour Party; subsequently, he backed Kinnock's strategy of modernizing the party and gradually abandoning unpopular left-wing policies.

      Blair's decision to appoint Cook as shadow foreign secretary in 1994, following Blair's election as leader, made Cook one of Blair's three most senior lieutenants. (The other two were deputy leader John Prescott and shadow chancellor Gordon Brown.) At first Cook appeared the most junior of the triumvirate, but he gradually gained ground by virtue of his sharp intellect and even sharper debating skills, which regularly cheered Labour MPs and depressed Conservatives. Few doubted that Cook would be a major—and formidable—member of a future Labour government. (PETER KELLNER)

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