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Update 6: September 2005: People and Politics: the deaths of Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam

Chapters 7 and 18 (on the core executive and on leadership selection) both emphasise how personally demanding and stressful is the life of a leading politician, particularly the life of a Cabinet member. Those who last - getting right to the top into office as Prime Minister - need to be both physically and mentally outstandingly tough. If we look back at the original first Blair Cabinet of 1997, we find in September 2005 that only seven of its members remain in the Cabinet. Three of the original Cabinet died tragically young: Donald Dewar, who had left the Cabinet and the Westminster Parliament to become the first Chief Minister in the devolved Scottish Executive; Robin Cook, who had resigned from the Cabinet in 2004 over the decision to go to war in Iraq, but who remained a Member of Parliament; and Mo Mowlam, who left Parliament as early as 2001, following a highly successful spell as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and a much less happy spell as the Cabinet's 'progress chaser' of reform. Only Donald Dewar died while holding public office, but the loss dramatises the tremendous human cost of modern politics, especially as Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam died within a few weeks of each other in August 2005.

The fate of the others who fell by the wayside illustrates different aspects of the brutality of a modern political career:

• A number were swiftly destroyed by the sheer brutality of infighting within government. David Clark, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, never recovered from a furious row with the Lord Chancellor and the Home Secretary about Freedom of Information Legislation, and was soon dropped. Chris Smith, National Heritage Secretary, carried the can for the disastrous Millennium Dome project even though he had virtually nothing to do with its conception. He left Parliament in 2005.
• Some had fates which show the power of accident in a career. Frank Dobson was a highly effective Health Secretary, and a popular London MP. He was persuaded to resign government office to fight Ken Livingstone for the London Mayoralty in 2000, lost disastrously, and has since remained on the backbenches. Ron Davies (Welsh Secretary and the architect of the Welsh Devolution reforms) suffered a more personal accident: he was ordered to resign from the government within hours following lurid newspaper allegations after he was robbed by someone he had met while walking on Clapham Common in London and has disappeared from Westminster politics.

Of the seven who remain from the 1997 Cabinet, only three are in the same jobs: Prime Minister Blair; his Chancellor, Gordon Brown; and Deputy Prime Minister Prescott (though the range of Prescott's responsibilities has waxed and waned over time). The others are: Margaret Beckett (Trade and Industry 1997, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, in 2005); David Blunkett (Education in 1997, Pensions in 2005); Jack Straw (Home Secretary 1997, Foreign Secretary 2005); Alistair Darling (Chief Secretary to the Treasury 1997, Transport in 2005).

David Blunkett represents a rarity: a career resurrected after Cabinet resignation. He resigned as Home Secretary in December 2004 in a scandal over the issue of a visa to the nanny employed by his American mistress, but returned to the Cabinet after the 2005 General Election. The only other dismissed Cabinet Member who has made a partial return is Harriet Harman: Secretary of State for Social Security Secretary in 1997, she lost office in furious infighting over the pace of social security reform; but has since returned to the middle ranking, but non-Cabinet position of Solicitor General.

The lessons of all this are: don't go into politics unless you have the proverbial constitution of an ox; and be ready to lose your job at a moment's notice. 

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