How Robin Cook led her to diplomatic disaster... then left to be with his lover

IN THE first months of Tony Blair’s New Labour administration, the Government despatched the Queen to India and Pakistan to mark the 50th anniversary of independence. Her 1961 tour to the region had been triumphal — but any hopes of a re-run would soon be dashed.

The royal party were already nervous as the tour began in Pakistan. This was the Queen’s first overseas trip since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, two months earlier and Diana had been something of a local hero in Pakistan after her visit to a children’s hospital there.

The beginnings of a diplomatic disaster were already taking place as Robin Cook, accompanying the Queen on his first state visit as Foreign Secretary, was accosted by members of Pakistan’s media at a British reception. To their delight, he expressed Britain’s willingness to act as a broker in any peace negotiations with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

When news reports announced a fresh breakthrough on Kashmir, the Indian government was appalled. It wanted no external interference. The mood worsened when the British High Commissioner in India, Sir David Gore-Booth, was tackled on the subject ahead of the Queen’s arrival in Delhi. His dismissive retort that the Indians should ‘stop tilting at windmills’ brought simmering resentments to the boil.

As the Queen and the Duke spent a private weekend at a Pakistani hill station prior to the start of the Indian leg of the tour, Cook returned home for a couple of days ‘on business’.

When the royal party arrived in Delhi the following week, however, the mood was toxic.

The Indian Prime Minister had been quoted in the media belittling Britain as a ‘third-rate power’, while The Times of India called the Queen ‘frumpish and banal’.

Some guests found that their invitations to royal events were mysteriously rescinded. The Band of the Royal Marines, due to perform at a royal event at the National Museum, were suddenly told not to bother coming. The original itinerary included a speech by the Queen in Madras. Though the speech had already been drafted, her Indian hosts suddenly removed it from the official schedule.

There were further slights all week. As the media pointed the blame at Robin Cook — who had not only stirred things up in Pakistan, but had approved every aspect of the Queen’s programme — he tried to pass the buck, blaming the media, the Royal Household, junior staff, anyone, in fact, but himself.

A prickly but gifted parliamentary performer, he had only been in the job for a matter of months and was not about to allow this tour to besmirch his reputation.

The final straw came as the Queen went to fly home.

The Indian authorities roughed up one member of the British High Commission team and tried to block her press secretary from boarding the plane. The visit, The Times pronounced, had been a ‘disaster’. ‘Conceived in error, botched at birth,’ wrote the BBC’s veteran India expert, Mark Tully.

Sir David Gore-Booth had a difficult task as he sat down to write his despatch on the tour for his boss, the Foreign Secretary. Showing an almost Olympian capacity for looking on the bright side, he painted the tour as a great result for all concerned. He opened with a quote from the Irish writer Brendan Behan: ‘All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.’ He went on to say that the ‘carnivorous British press’ had been ‘only too eager to find fault’.

In reality, British diplomats were ‘pretty devastated’, according to one involved. It is an astonishing measure of the failure of the tour that the FCO even felt obliged to write to the diplomats involved, assuring them that the visit would not be held against them on their records.

Sir David, who died in 2004, had been tipped as a future British Ambassador to the United Nations. His staff, whom he stoutly defended from the internal fallout after the visit and who were very fond of him, believe that the royal debacle scuppered his UN prospects.

So what of the ‘urgent business’ that had called Robin Cook back to the UK halfway through this state visit? It later emerged that he had not spent the weekend on pressing international affairs of state, but had been at home in his constituency with the new woman in his life — his diary secretary for whom he had recently left his wife.