James Cook
speaker
1,779 appearances
16 recordings
3 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 19 Sep
James Cook’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 15 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 6.
Appearances
for many years before that.
He worked for Tony Blair back in the day, both in government and then also once Tony Blair was no longer in government, he worked for David Miliband at the International Rescue Committee.
And yeah, he left Downing Street and in the months prior to him leaving, there was, as we heard yesterday from Sir Ollie Robbins, conversations that Downing Street had with him about
the then head of the civil service within the Foreign Office, around whether or not there was a, basically, were there any jobs going in the diplomatic service to become an ambassador?
But don't tell the Foreign Secretary.
But don't tell the Foreign Secretary.
And I know this sounds, because it is a very kind of inside baseball, Westminster-y, Beltway, SW1, London-y kind of story.
about people who are not, you know, public figures to any great degree and what jobs they may or may not be being hawked for.
But I must admit, my jaw did drop when I heard that line from Sir Ollie in front of the select committee.
Now, I've spoken to Matthew Doyle, Lord Doyle as he now is, after...
Sirolli's revelations yesterday, and he was saying it was news to him that this was going on.
But there we had pretty much confirmation.
It wasn't denied yesterday, so there was no suggestion that it wasn't true yesterday.
And Sirolli had been the recipient of these calls, so he was a primary source in this revelation.
But the Prime Minister...
tacitly acknowledging there that this had gone on, that Downing Street had indeed sought to see if there might be any vacancies.
We heard yesterday from Sir Ollie that it was his view that this was, I mean, he put it quite diplomatically, quite a surprise to him and quite uncomfortable, particularly not being able to share this information or this inquiry with anyone.
the then Foreign Secretary, David Lammy.
And in the end, nothing came of it.
And, you know, outwardly, Lord Doyle wasn't sort of wildly qualified, to put it gently, for this kind of job.
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