Labour leadership?

On Sunday, 15 August 2004, Peter Sissons interviewed former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, MP

Please note "BBC Breakfast with Frost" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, MP

PETER SISSONS: Now while government ministers enjoy a well-earned summer break - or not well-earned, depending on who's side you're on - one former member of the Cabinet is touring the country trying to bolster Labour's support.

Robin Cook resigned because he was against the war in Iraq, that's well know, but he doesn't want voters who share his views on that to desert the party at the next election.

Mr Cook is particularly worried about the effect of the war among Muslim communities, so he's been touring mosques and addressing meetings, and he joins me now from our Edinburgh studio. Robin thank you very much.

ROBIN COOK: Good to be with you Peter.

PETER SISSONS: The Guardian described you as a unlikely cheerleader for Tony Blair. Is your campaign to get closer to Britain's Muslims something that was your idea or were you asked to do it?

ROBIN COOK: Well, first of all Peter I wouldn't describe it as an organised tour but I go where I'm invited and I go when I have the time to do it and I'm very happy to meet with the many people around Britain who want to discuss with me the situation in Britain and the relationship with Iraq.

Could I put in perspective, first of all, what I have been saying to the Muslim communities, since my days at the Foreign Office I strongly believe that the really challenging project for this century is how does the West build a positive, constructive relationship with the world of Islam, based on tolerance and understanding.

Now if we are going to do that we have got to have understanding at home ourselves, between ourselves and our own Muslim community, which is a very important part of a modern Britain, and there are very deep concerns in that community about what we did in Iraq, in the conduct of our foreign policy, and that's why I'm very keen that they should understand that those concerns are shared by senior figures within the Labour Party. So I'll continue to express those concerns but I'll carry more authority in the Labour Party if people like them, who share my views, who are also worried about Iraq continue their support for the Labour Party.

PETER SISSONS: But the issue was grave enough for you to resign over it, why should ordinary Muslims take your word that they should come back to Labour, forget it, entrust their future to the Labour government?

ROBIN COOK: Well I'm not telling them to ... my word, it's a dialogue and we've had some very good positive discussions with them and I've had a warm welcome wherever I've gone.

Yes, you are right, I did resign over the war in Iraq, I resigned because I did not believe it would be right to proceed without clear, multilateral support than we had for that intervention and because, frankly, as I said in my resignation speech, I did not believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which could pose a threat to Britain or indeed to anybody else. Now, I resigned from the government, I did not resign from the Labour Party. I'm very proud of what this Labour government has done for Britain and the way in which we've presided over record investment in the health service, presided over the creation of two million more jobs, tackled child poverty.

Those are all issues in which there is strong support, not just in the Muslim communities but across Britain. The tragedy for Tony Blair is that his choice of support for George Bush and the war in Iraq has cast a shadow over the very real, positive achievements and, yes, Iraq has become the defining issue of this parliament but it is very important that those who are concerned with Iraq do not lose sight of the very many gains that they've had from the Labour Party.

PETER SISSONS: In your book, The Point of Departure by Robin Cook, the updated edition, your frontbench diary, now in paperback, you say "if Tony Blair wants to win back those whose support he has forfeited because of Iraq he must convince them that lessons have been learnt" but that - and you yourself point out - at the Labour conference after the war, Tony Blair was unrepentant - "I would take the same decision again." Isn't that the problem, when you're trying to get people back on side who have drifted from Labour or who are disillusioned with Labour because of the war?

ROBIN COOK: Well I would agree with you Peter, I think it's very important that Tony Blair makes it clear that the particular events surrounding Iraq, the decision that he took in Iraq, will not happen again. I hope at this year's conference he will not be repeating that line that in the same circumstances he would do it again.

What people want to hear - and it's not just the Muslim communities, it's across the whole of Britain and millions of people who opposed the war in the first place and feel that their anxieties about the war have proved to be right by the tragic aftermath and the current situation in Iraq which as we see now is in as bad a state as it ever has been since the war - if he's going to reach out to these people and bring them back to Labour he needs to make clear that Iraq was unique, it's not going to happen again.

And I would see here Peter that one reason for hope for me here that I was in Boston at the Democratic convention, overwhelmingly the delegates at that convention were hostile to what George Bush did in Iraq, deeply concerned with the current position inside Iraq, I very much hope that we will see a change in the United States and I believe that if George Bush were to be defeated that would be a great help to Tony Blair because it would remove the threat that if there was another Bush presidency, George Bush might carry out a similar adventure and Tony Blair might then feel obliged to support him again. It would put into the past the decision that was taken on Iraq very effectively.

PETER SISSONS: On the other hand it could be bad for Tony Blair in that he's been so, so gung-ho for Bush, that when he goes to shake hands with Mr Kerry, who felt that the Bush-Blair axis misled us into war, he could get a rather dusty reception for a few months.

ROBIN COOK: Well I don't think he'll get a dusty reception, it's not going to be the way it has been and frankly that might be healthy for both our countries, because it's very important that both the United States and the United Kingdom should have their own independent foreign policy and should consider carefully what are their interests, and certainly in our case we should consider what's good for Britain, what's right for Britain around the world, not necessarily what is wanted by the current occupant of the White House, which has been very damaging for Britain's interests, particularly in Europe, over the past two years.

But he will get a welcome, courteous response, I've not the slightest doubt whoever is president of the United States, they will want to have a good relationship with Britain and will want to work closely with Britain.

PETER SISSONS: I don't know if you've seen the story in The Sunday Times this morning, that Tony Blair plans to invite Iyad Alawi, Iraq's new prime minister, to address the Labour Party conference next month - "it's a move," it says, "that will defy critics of the war in his own party. It's Mr Blair clearly making no concessions to the view that he was wrong over the war, he wants to try to convince the party of his view." Do you have a reaction to that?

ROBIN COOK: Well I'll wait until I hear it formally, rather than through the press. Of course we want to make sure that the situation in Iraq is improved and to that extent I do hope that the current government in Iraq will be successful. I am very concerned with the current position inside Iraq, the degree of unrest among so many of the cities in Iraq - not just in Shia areas but also the Sunni areas as well, it has been, it has seen severe fighting over the last two days.

It does suggest that the present government is not seen as legitimate by the Iraqis, it certainly is not what was hoped for when the handover took place last June, the security situation now is as bad as it was before that handover. And I'm particularly surprised that the American military have returned to the heavy-handed tactics in Najaf that they were adopting beforehand - you may remember that back in the spring there was a leak of a document from the Foreign Office saying that Britain should increase its efforts to encourage the Americans to adopt a more soft approach on the use of military firepower.

The danger of what's currently being done in Najaf is, first of all, we give a status, we create support and sympathy for Moqtada al-Sadr that he does not deserve, but worst of all then the West appears as the people who are the occupiers, the people who are carrying out the violence, the people who may be threatening a very holy site in this case in Najaf, and that's very much the wrong message you want to send to Iraq and to the wider Muslim world.

PETER SISSONS: Just looking again at your book, Robin, you write in the epilogue, "What still troubles me about Iraq is not just that the war was a spectacular mistake but that the Labour government persists in refusing to accept that it was a mistake at all." You've called for closure, but you're not going to get closure on that issue are you under the leadership of Tony Blair?

ROBIN COOK: Well Tony Blair has said that he intends to continue until the next election and beyond the next election and this party conference what we will want to make sure is that we have a united party that can fight the next election as a united party. Tony Blair has his part to play in achieving that unity and building that unity.

Nobody is going to seriously challenge Tony for leadership but as he himself might put it, leadership has responsibilities as well as rights and I think that he needs to listen to the party, he needs to listen to the wider country, particularly all those millions of people who were very concerned about going to war in the first place, and he needs to make it clear that he's not just listening to them but he's also taken on board their message and that he understands that he cannot take Britain to war again in such very divided circumstances.

One good thing he could do at this party conference would be to rule out the adoption of the pre-emptive strike which George Bush invented to justify the attack on Iraq, because that places enormous weight, enormous stress, on having the correct intelligence and one of the things that we've learned from Iraq is you will never have intelligence good enough to justify a war on its own on the basis there may be a threat several years down the road. Now if he could show that he's accepted some of the lessons of Iraq and it's not going to happen again then I think, yes, he can build bridges to the many people who found it very difficult to accept that decision and, looking back on it, believe they were more right than Tony Blair.

PETER SISSONS: But when you attack all the other reasons for going to war, Tony Blair falls back on the one which few people have a convincing answer to, that without Saddam Hussein Iraq must be better off. It is absolutely essential to have got this man off the scene and Iraqis know that and in time will appreciate that we've done them one enormous favour.

ROBIN COOK: Well if he is going to credibly get that message across, he does need to show an improvement in the situation within Iraq and with the present background of this conversation it's very difficult to argue that the Iraqis are at the present time happy people or that we have in any way carried out what we promised when we overthrew Saddam Hussein, which was to provide security, stability, democracy and human rights. Certainly we have not provided them with security. I've always been in favour of intervention on humanitarian grounds.

I've done it in the past, I supported the intervention in Kosovo, I supported our action in Sierra Leone but if you're going to do that you do need to have international support. What is very dangerous about what we did in Iraq is that we and Washington alone decided we were going to intervene and change a regime. Now once any one or two countries takes that rights to themselves, and take it away from the international community, and as we did in Iraq do it in defiance of the United Nations, then you are entering a very dangerous world in which any one country can decide which other regime needs changing.

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NB: this transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy.

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