I should know better

Sad to bid farewell to Robin Cook. He was an intelligent and responsible politician, and at the time that Smith died and people suddnly realised that Labour might be electable, I had hoped that Cook might succeed him and give us the experience of a leader who was both clever and had a conscience - as it was we got one who was clever....and you know where that took us. Turning points in history - Cook`s resignation over Iraq gave us a glimpse of what might have been.

He was far from good-looking - someone memorably described him as looking like "an enraged and belligerent shrimp" - and at the time that all his infidelities came to light, the general reaction to the trail of eager bimbos he had left in his wake was not so much "how immoral" as "how the hell did he manage that?"

If he had turned to Scottish politics we might have had a responsible First Minster, but his interest did not lie that way.

He will be missed.