It took a speech of fewer than 1,300 words to make a rod for the government's back that has been gleefully wielded by its critics for the past 12 years. Soon after the Labour Party won power in 1997, the late Robin Cook, then foreign secretary, outlined his priorities for Britain abroad. The most eye-catching was a pledge to heed ethics as well as interests in shaping foreign policy. It quickly became Labour's equivalent of the "back to basics" speech given by John Major, the former Conservative prime minister, four years earlier: a statement of moral intent undone by successive failures to live up to it.
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