Normally when newspapers get wrong the story of my conversations with Robin Cook about the end of his marriage, it is to say I asked him to choose between his wife and his lover. A new version appears in your editorial on scientist Tim Hunt (1 July), where you state that I called Robin at Heathrow “to tell him he had to choose between his job and his lover”. Neither version is accurate. As my diaries make clear, what I said, when he asked for my advice about how to handle the News of the World inquiries which had come to me, was that he should seek “clarity” about the intentions in his private life, and that I had persuaded the newspaper not to approach anyone else until the next day. This was advice given as much as a friend as a media manager.
Even more strangely, your editorial also talks of this as “the pre-social-media-era dumping of the Labour foreign secretary”, suggesting he lost his job. He did not, as surely any senior Guardian journalist would know. Indeed included in the account of those initial phone calls was my passing on an assurance from the prime minister that he did not see the affair per se as a resigning issue. Robin remained as foreign secretary, later became Commons leader, and when he finally resigned over Iraq we had another set of friendly discussions about how to handle this, because though he could not support the government position, he did not want to inflict huge political damage on Tony Blair. As I wrote in my diary, since published, “(Robin) said we had been through some very difficult times together and he always valued my advice and support. He said there was something oddly fitting about the fact we had worked so closely at the end of his marriage and were working so closely again at the end of his ministerial career.”
Given the fond place that Robin holds in the hearts of many Guardian readers, I hope you can publish this letter by way of clarification.
Alastair Campbell
Former Downing Street press secretary
