'Remarkable' Mo Mowlam dies at 55
I knew yesterday that when I got up this morning this would be the news. Unsurprising. I have been expected it since she was admitted to Kings a couple of weeks ago. I believed that if the admission was unrelated to the brain tumour there would have been a clear statement saying so.
And, to be honest, unsurprising for a number of years.
Still makes me very sad. I can't say she was ever amongst my very favourite politicians, but when she addressed Streatham Labour Party annual dinner in 1995 she was fabulous. Combative but charming, entertaining and interesting.
Being Northern Ireland Secretary from 1997 means that she will always have her place in history. I suspect that in the coming months there will be acres of print journalism about how Blair marginalised her, took over, etc etc. But the nature of that process is that we don't know the details of how it all happened, and probably won't for decades, because it involved a lot of dogmatic mem having to lose face. But it happened. It's still far from a perfect situation, but it is far better than it was a dozen years ago. In my view, everyone who contributed to that Labour and Conservative, Sinn Fein and Ulster Unionist (and IMO, overwhelmingly SDLP) should get credit. I think that if in life you can say you have made a significant contribution towards Peace you can look yourself in the mirror. I guess most people of any integrity tend to dwell on the fact that they could have done more.
In the late Nineties, Mo was extraordinarily popular with the public. Some of this was undoubtedly due to a recognition of how she was performing a pressurised job after a very serious illness. There's a streak of abstract sentimentality there, but I think also that many people know that illness can cause one to lose focus and drive; many people choose instead to look at the flowers. So there is an element of "I wouldn't couldn't do that" informing the admiration.
Additionally, and this is easy to forget just a few years on, Mo Mowlam, along with some others, was a real breath of fresh air blowing through Government. For me, I had grown up with Cabinet Ministers being, almost by definition, stuffy and unapproachable. I thought then that it was a difference between parties and social background. Perhpas I'm more ready to acknowledge the institutionalising effect of being a Minister for so many years; certainly, it's extraordinary when you see ex-Ministers liberated and able to mature into rounded human beings, regardless of Party. But, nevertheless, I did enjoy Mo's novel 'fuck you' attitude.
The more perceptive amongst you may have noticed that I never got round to acknowledging Robin Cook's death. I actually found out via WAP, in the interval of a concert, when the main purpoose had been to check the cricket score at stumps, and I had stupidly clicked on "News". That was a shock to read of a sudden unexpected death. I didn't blog it largely because I was expecting Mo's to follow swiftly afterwards.
I never met Robin Cook, but during the Nineties a couple of friends worked at his researcher.
Robin always loomed large in my political consciousness. He was Neil Kinnock's campaign manager for party leader in 1983; not long after I joined the Labour Party. Perhaps his finest hour came over the Scott Report into the Supergun, where he just tore the Tory Government apart (ably assisted by a fine researcher, Ambrose).
The Observer headline on 4 May 1997 was "An Ethical Foreign Policy". The big question is "What went wrong?" Cynically, I say, no Foreign Secretary ever rules the Foreign Office. They are absolutely at the behest of officials, in a way that does not happen in the Home Civil Service.
Robin Cook strove to change the working patterns of the House of Commons. Perhaps, in time, this will prove to change attitudes, too. In resigning from the Cabinet over the Iraq war he spoke eloquently for millions; he proved to be prophetic.
Mo distanced herself from the political scene of late, perhaps partly because of illness. Robin was an active backbencher right up to the end of the Parliamentary session. I shall miss them both, although inevitably, they will both slip into political history, where a week is a very long time.
But for me, their deaths, coming so close together signal an end of an era. They were both in that 1997 Cabinet, a Government that promised so much, achieved quite a lot, and could have achieved so much more. But Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam are the sort of people I want running the country, not the unprincipled Tories of the past or the future. Both of them had their principles but they also both understood that politics is the art of the possible, and if you dance around too much on your principles, you achieve nothing.
British Politics has suffered two sad premature losses this month. I hope that, somewhere, there are people who may have been inspired by one or other or both of them.
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