FROM 'BUSINESS AS USUAL' TO 'THE RULES OF THE GAME ARE CHANGING'
Last week Number Ten commented that it fully supported the argument put by the Prime Minister's wife Cherie Blair, in Malaysia that it would be wrong to curtail civil liberties in the face of the threat of terrorism. The Prime Minister promised to a 'battle of ideas' against extremists. On Friday, the Prime Minister used his Press Conference to announce an extraordinary package of measures to silence extremists. New laws against incitement to commit acts of terrorism, to close militant mosques, ban radical organisations like Hizb-ut-Tahrir and detain terror suspects were unveiled as the Prime Minister growled 'the rules of the game are changing'.
In the aftermath of the London bombings Blair was insisting that life should carry on as normal. Now, as if to demonstrate that the Islamists' argument that liberal democracy is a sham, Blair has torn up essential civil liberties. This is not a reaction of strength, but the institutionalisation of a state of terror.
Behind the Prime Minister's change of rules is the determination to strike down those parts of the human rights legislation that prevent his measures, and to face down those judges that have used the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to stop him in the past.
The Prime Minister is right that Parliament should be allowed to take what actions it thinks appropriate, without being prevented by the judiciary - it is just that these actions are wrong. But why does Blair find it so difficult to understand that writing the ECHR into British law would act as a constraint on parliamentary sovereignty? It was his government that enshrined the ECHR in national law in the first place.
THE BARRACK-ROOM LAWYER
Former Home Secretary Robin Cook, who died yesterday, was lauded across a political spectrum running from Tory Michael Howard to anti-war MP George Galloway. Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition celebrated his resignation from the Labour Cabinet to oppose the war against Iraq, while US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took the time to praise his determination to wage war against the Serbs in 1999.
During his lifetime, Cook made few friends, conducting a decades-long feud with fellow Scottish Labour Party member George Brown, sniping at New Labour architect Peter Mandelson, and more lately urging the resignation of Tony Blair - all the people who are praising him now, in fact.
Cook was the product of Scotland's Labour establishment serving many years as local councillor in Edinburgh and MP. Much better read than the Prime Minister, he was for many years a Workers' Education Tutor. His socialism was conservative, seeking to sustain the 'natural affection which residents feel for the streets in which they grew up . the fragile thread of friendship and acquaintance which hold together a society' ('Scotland's Housing', in The Red paper on Scotland, 1975, p.337). Policies that sounded militant in England, like nationalisation, or anti-militarism, were woven into the ambition to safeguard Scottish society.
Remembered today as a left-wing firebrand Cook was part of the 'Tribune' group and agent for 'moderniser' Neil Kinnock in the contest for the Labour Party leadership in 1983, and again in 1988 when facing down the left's candidates Benn and Heffer. Unlike many of Kinnock's supporters, though, Cook saw the party positioned on the left and New Labour's exercises in focus group research left him cold. He still wanted to reconcile working class aspirations with the state. When Nurses struck against the National Health Service pay award in 1989, Cook's oratory turned the dispute around to a defence of the NHS against Tory cuts.
A depressed Cook told his wife that he had 'sold his soul to the devil' by signing up to Tony Blair's New Labour party (International Herald Tribune, 11 January 1999). But Cook's strident dissection of Tory Party scandals, most famously the report into the Matrix-Churchill affair, were a model of New Labour's apolitical projection. The passion missing from New Labour's programme was augmented by denouncing Tory sleaze, at which Cook demonstrated his barrack-room lawyer skills.
But it was as Foreign Secretary that Cook made his greatest contribution to New Labour's distinct appeal. A former Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament supporter, Cook seemed to be an unlikely candidate. But in fact he adapted the high moral stance of anti-militarism to formulate an 'ethical foreign policy' that claimed to stand above national interest. This seemingly utopian reformulation of Britain's military strategy elevated ideological goals over mere self-defence. Even though it was criticised by Number Ten's advisors as a hostage to fortune, what came to be called 'Humanitarian intervention', in the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere, turned out to be an enhancement both of Britain's military reach and the Prime Minister's own standing.
Cook was shocked at his demotion to Leader of the House in 2001. Despite his successes, Blair was weary of his Foreign Secretary's erratic outbursts. Cook found he had few friends outside of Number Ten's patronage. A breach with the front bench was looming.
Robin Cook's transition from champion of humanitarian intervention to opponent of the Iraq war mirrors the course of Britain's liberal-left intelligentsia. Outraged at what they saw as the Tory Party's unwillingness to intervene in Bosnia in the early nineties, they became more strident supporters of militarism. But the framework of international legality and morality continued to sustain them. The failure of the UN Security Council to agree the intervention in Iraq was the point when many shifted ground to oppose rather than support another military intervention.
In parliament, it was pointed that many of the leaders of the opposition were among the original supporters of New Labour - Frank Dobson, Chris Smith and the most senior Labour Party rebel, Robin Cook. But like Smith and Dobson, Cook's rebellion only came after his demotion. His 'forensic' dissection of the legal case for war echoed the parliamentary performances of the early nineties, except this time it was the Labour not the Tory front bench that was in the firing line.
Cook's role as architect of New Labour's ethical imperialism was promptly forgotten by the left, who embraced him as their new champion - though he was ambitious enough to keep his own distance from them.