¤ "In the Cabinet and out of it he was one of the leading figures of Labour's years in office. He was an outstanding parliamentarian and it was in the House that his forensic and potent skills in debate shone most clearly... the government's most effective and intelligent critic, he continued his opposition in lucid and forensically argued journalism..." - The Observer, August 7.

¤ "He was a man of high principle..." - The Sunday Independent, August 7.

Even though I met Robin Cook twice in my former capacity of international secretary of the Malta Labour Party, at the British Labour Party annual conferences in Bournemouth and Brighton, I cannot claim to have known him as well and worked closely with him the way my colleague, George Vella; did when they were both Foreign Ministers and when at a later stage Mr Cook chaired the Party of European Socialists - the PES.

But although from a distance I always admired the man - particularly his political resolve, his spellbinding oratory as well as his journalistic expertise.

There might not have been much that was charismatic about the man's looks but his political acumen more than compensated for this.

Never one to indulge in personal attacks he could argue his case clinically.

Although he was never known to be part of Tony Blair's inner circle or a personification of New Labour, he had performed admirably as Foreign Secretary. He will go down in history as a politician who had tried to blend ethics with politics when he was responsible for this portfolio - something that does not normally come easy to such a role.

Was it not ironic that inspite of delivering so many riveting public speeches and addresses his best speech ever had to be his resignation speech? It was March 17, 2003 when he chose to resign from government in protest at the government's policy on Iraq.

BBC political editor Andrew Marr described his resignation speech as "without doubt one of the most effective, brilliant, resignation speeches in modern British politics".

It was in Blackpool that I had my very first taste of Mr Cook's skills as an intellectual and radical reformer. Arriving late for the British Labour Party conference due to train delays, I caught his speech on TV while busy unpacking my bags in my hotel room. No wonder someone described him recently as "a reformer by intellect and by instinct".

In spite of the turbulence of his private life, there was principle in the conduct of his political life.

Even when his criticism of the war in Iraq was at its harshest and bitterest, he lost none of his sense of dignity.

One would have expected that a bitter politician would have shirked the responsibility to help Mr Blair in the recent electoral campaign. On the contrary he was among the front-line campaigners whose task was ironically that of getting disaffected Labour voters back to the party.

And yet his best quote will remain the following: "I cannot support a war without international agreement or domestic support. Neither the international community nor the British people is persuaded there is an urgent or compelling reason for this action in Iraq..."

When he wrote The Point Of Departure he wrote something that was far more than a normal autobiography. Part autobiographical it ran like a diary without trimmings or editing only to end up on a high note with what sounded like his own very personal political manifesto in the concluding chapter Where Do We Go From Here?

His main concern was that Labour needed to recapture momentum and to mend the erosion of its political support.

He acknowledged the so-called first modernisation of Labour a decade earlier, describing it as a success "because it caught a tide among members and supporters who were impatient of electoral failure, tired of sterile debates on old remedies and hungry for imaginative, novel solutions..."

In a very scathing manner he remarked that those who were most disappointed by the timidity of the Blair government's second term were those who were most supportive of modernisation.

I will close this article with his sharpest observation that should apply to us all social democrats, whichever side of the globe we might happen to be on:

"Renewal must be about more than reviving party political support for Labour. It must also offer a prospect of giving politics back a sense of excitement and rekindling the dwindling interest in the political system... This means a return to value-based politics. A large part of New Labour's current problems is the perception, which it has brought upon itself, that it is good at producing a spate of performance indicators, public service agreements and delivery targets but less strong at generating vision, values and ideology."

Mr Brincat is the main opposition spokesman on foreign affairs and IT.

leo.brincat@gov.mt