The truth about Campbell and me

Kimberly Fortier talks to Robin Cook about war and peace – and that day at Heathrow

Don’t you just love the two Robin Cooks? There’s the philandering habitué of the turf, the one who runs off with his secretary; and then there’s the conscientious objector to war, the one who sacrifices power for principle. These two Robin Cooks invite two distinct lines of questioning. The first is far more fun.

‘Tell me, Mr Cook,’ I say, bounding into his office. ‘Did you sex up your own dossier by inserting a new wife at the last minute?’

Actually I don’t, because I am a coward.

Instead Robin takes control. ‘Let me explain the rules of the game,’ he says. ‘My objective here is to get through this interview without saying anything that will end up in the headlines of the newspapers tomorrow morning.’

I am seated in Robin Cook’s new office, which is in the annex to the annex to Parliament. It’s a bit of an elephant’s burial ground. Clare Short is right next door; I shouldn’t wonder if Frank Dobson and Chris Smith are down the corridor. He begins by trying to disarm me, pretending he has nothing new to say. ‘I’m sorry,’ he explains, ‘but I have to retain a reputation for gravitas, which is important if I am going to succeed in saying what I have to say about Iraq.’

He thinks the foreign affairs committee has done a good job with its report on the run-up to the war against Iraq. ‘It is a measured document,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t the foreign affairs committee which turned the report into a war between Alastair Campbell and the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan. Forget all that business. Alastair did that. It was a red herring. The real issue is, how did we end up at war with Iraq? Was what we were told before the lead-up to the war correct? If so, why did it seem so wildly out of touch with what is happening on the ground now that the war is over?’

But wasn’t the government exonerated by this report? ‘No,’ says Cook.