In adolescence and early adulthood many human being have thoughts that occur to them from time to time

In adolescence and early adulthood, many human being have thoughts that occur to them from time to time. “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life,” it began. Despite his self-proclaimed leftward leanings, in the 1950s and 1960s he was often a fellow guest of mine in some of the smarter of our stately homes. He liked nothing more than to parade from library to drawing room bearing this or that heavy tome of philosophical ramblings, often written by an author of impenetrably foreign extraction.

Yet frequently would I creep up behind his favoured seat and mount a spot check on his reading matter: sure enough, tucked into the voluminous pages of the extended edition of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by the lugubrious Wittgenstein would be a freshly minted copy of Health and Efficiency, complete with sharp-focussed photographs of fuller-breasted housewives enjoying a carefree session of volleyball dressed in nothing but their birthday suits.Later, I came across a draft copy of the old rogue’s autobiography. Let me make it plain from the outset that I am not one for gossip. Tittle- tattle concerning the private lives of distinguished men (and women!!) is repugnant to my nature. I would run a mile rather than betray my inside knowledge of, say, the family ties between Mrs Imran Khan and the Princess of Wales (peas in a pod, but whisper it not!) or, in a more intellectual sphere, the propensity of the left-wing firebrand Professor Eric Hobsbawm (dread name!) to drip soft-boiled egg on his jacket during breakfast, completely undermining his reputation as a “serious” historian.
Nevertheless, the Russell story provides further proof that the majority of so-called “intellectuals” are unsuited to the task of thinking, in any proper meaning of the word, and were always more at home prowling the cheaply carpeted corridors of a fifth-rate Spanish bordello than chewing the cud in the common rooms of our historic seats of learning.Take Russell, for instance. There was Mark Thatcher in Oman, there was the Pergau Dam affair, there was the Scott Report, there was Mr Hurd taking a balanced view of Bosnia. After 18 years of raw national egoism, the world does not like Britain very much.Uncomfortable, the public now hanker for an older foreign policy which at least tries to imagine the interests of the rest of humanity The British do not want Cook the Crusader, and nor does he. The British have been living with a foreign policy which was sometimes highly ideological but never pretended to be “do-gooding” or moral.

I note with horror, but not, I might add, surprise, that wagging tongues are claiming that my old sparring-partner and fellow egg-head Bertrand Russell once enjoyed a “carry-on” with the wife of his own son. But neither do they seem to like Realpolitik, which has remained an ugly foreign word. It is time for a diplomacy which improves the world a little.. They feel close to the web of non-governmental organisations, the aid agencies which have their own sans-frontieres dash and glamour, and a solidarity with other peoples which jumps over foreign policy.

The NGOs are in many ways the revival of the Victorian missionaries, equally independent of government, equally world-conscious and impatient for moral action.Mr Cook is heir to all this moral concern. The Colonial Office was usually appalled by each proposal for a new Colony or Protectorate: “Far too expensive, provocative to the French or the PortugueseEspecially since the end of the Cold War, young people in this country have looked at the outside world and its poorer parts in a new way. And yet, because of Gladstone, the British still find it hard to be amoral about foreign policy.So the “ethical dimension” is not new but very old. Within living memory it helped to dismantle the British colonial empire.

The tradition effectively began with the Evangelical campaigns against the slave trade; a century later, it inspired generations of Labour and Liberal idealists who helped the peoples of India and Africa towards self-government.And yet, in Victorian times, the “ethical dimension” had also helped to expand that same Empire. Disraeli joked that Gladstone’s speeches were the worst Bulgarian atrocity, and observed that he was “inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity” So he was. It was only in the South and the metropolis, among the Anglican squires and within the propertied minority who had the vote, that he was derided. In Scotland, in the North of England and the Midlands, among non-Conformists, his message that foreign policy was about Christian ethics and compassion went powerfully home.