Today saw the funeral of Robin Cook, one of the few genuinely likeable and trustworthy politicians around, since, whether you agreed with his politics or not (generally I did), he was always articulate, good at his job, and above all stood up for what he believed in, as Duncan Stephen wrote so well in his blog.
I think for a lot of people my age who were against the war in Iraq, Robin Cook’s resignation speech in the House of Commons just before the war began will have been one of the greatest political moments that they have seen so far. The anti-war movement was massive, and Cook became a sort of unofficial figurehead of it. He was far more reasonable, and likeable, than George Galloway. Clare Short, meanwhile, was seen as spineless, in contrast to what was perceived to be the much more principled stance of Cook. Robin Cook was a genuinely powerful voice from the backbenches.
So I am annoyed as most people that Tony Blair preferred to work on his tan today [given that I despise him to begin with], but for John McCrick to use his funeral speech to criticise him is out of order. One thing that Robin Cook definitely was not is a hypocrite, and McCrick has made one of himself by attacking Blair for politicising Robin Cook’s funeral, by doing the same thing himself. Such things should have been done in television interviews afterwards, or in a newspaper column, but definitely not during the funeral itself.