Only the good die young.
Robin Cook, the Scottish MP and former Cabinet minister, died shortly after collapsing suddenly last night whilst hillwalking with his wife in the Highlands.
He may have had a somewhat frightening resemblance to a garden gnome, but he was one of the few modern politicians with true principles and ideals and indeed acted on them. I believe his finest moment was the personal statement he made to the House of Commons on 17 March 2003 after being demoted to the backbenches for speaking out against the Second Gulf War. I had such high hopes for his political future as a much more major player in Labour, perhaps even Prime Minister once he'd gone grey, or as one of the figureheads of a new progressive libertarian party in my Dream Team political fantasies. I may not have agreed with everything he said or did, the politics of the party to which he belonged or some of the ways he lived his life, but in his premature death we lost one of the good ones. His contributions to Scottish, British and international politics will be solely missed.
Rest in peace, Robin Cook.
He may have had a somewhat frightening resemblance to a garden gnome, but he was one of the few modern politicians with true principles and ideals and indeed acted on them. I believe his finest moment was the personal statement he made to the House of Commons on 17 March 2003 after being demoted to the backbenches for speaking out against the Second Gulf War. I had such high hopes for his political future as a much more major player in Labour, perhaps even Prime Minister once he'd gone grey, or as one of the figureheads of a new progressive libertarian party in my Dream Team political fantasies. I may not have agreed with everything he said or did, the politics of the party to which he belonged or some of the ways he lived his life, but in his premature death we lost one of the good ones. His contributions to Scottish, British and international politics will be solely missed.
Rest in peace, Robin Cook.