Politics: Blair scorns campaign to vilify Cook

The Prime Minister's cold contempt for the media-led witch-hunt against Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, was revealed by his official spokesman yesterday. Anthony Bevins, Political Editor, reports on Tony Blair's hard-headed assessment of the public mood.

Before every Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister holds a preliminary session with the "big three": John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister; Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Mr Cook.

After yesterday's session, the No 10 spokesman said Mr Blair thought the media coverage of the Cook saga had been "pathetic"; the Prime Minister classed him as an "outstanding" Foreign Secretary; and as for hints that he was so damaged that he might have to be shifted to another ministerial post, it was said that nobody but the Prime Minister made appointments. "He and he alone decides who is in his Government," the spokesman added. "He does think there has been a total loss of perspective."

The fact that opinion poll ratings for the Government have slipped only marginally during a month packed with reports about a Brown-Blair rift, profligate Whitehall spending, and Mr Cook's personal difficulties, was taken as vindication of Mr Blair's view that the public are more interested in big issues like education, health and crime - which he has said, in Commons question time, have been ignored by William Hague

Underlining the message, the spokesman said that the agenda for yesterday's Cabinet included a detailed discussion about the principles of welfare reform, an assessment of the Northern Ireland talks from Mo Mowlam, and a lengthy consideration of the crisis over Iraq, which Mr Cook had described as "serious and worrying".

Yesterday's Tory fire appeared to be concentrated on the reasons for a weekend return trip from India to Britain and back, last October, and a Commons reply given by Mr Blair on Wednesday, in which he mistakenly said that Anne Bullen, Mr Cook's former diary secretary, had served out her contract before being replaced by a career civil servant.

In fact, Miss Bullen, who had been given a three-year contract in 1993, on the personal recommendation of Douglas Hurd, the then Tory Foreign Secretary, had her contract renewed for a further year by Sir Malcolm Rifkind, his successor, in November 1996.

As it was a case of mutual "hate at first sight" when Mr Cook arrived in May, her contract was prematurely terminated in June. Mr Blair's spokesman dismissed a charge that the Prime Minister had "lied" to the Commons.

But Michael Howard, the shadow Foreign Secretary, told BBC radio's Today programme: "We must have the truth. We are not being told the truth about this matter."

Mr Howard said that if it was true that Mr Cook had sacked Miss Bullen to make way for Gaynor Regan, his partner and constituency secretary, as alleged by Miss Bullen's "friends", that would amount to a scandalous abuse of power.