Insurances also recent higher flyers felt the pinch

Insurances, also recent higher flyers, felt the pinch.Among second liners Booker, the cash and carry group, endured a drubbing after producing a profits warning which must have embarrassed SBC Warburg. BG, the big mover and shaker on Thursday, slipped 1.25p to 303.75p, although its former gas arm, Centrica, edged ahead 1.75p to 95.5p, reflecting the settlement of the last of its cash- sapping take-and-pay gas contracts.It was not only Far Eastern banking shares which came under pressure. As the Far Eastern crisis appeared to worsen Footsie fell 98.8 points to 5,138.3. Not surprisingly shares with a significant Pacific exposure suffered the cruellest blows. The Standard Chartered banking group collapsed 50p to 547p, lowest for more than two years, and HSBC lost 54p to 1,379p, lowest for a year.
Last year Standard touched 1,081.5p; HSBC, with analysts forecasting a run to 2,600p, peaked at 2,347p.Cable & Wireless, with its extensive Far Eastern network, retreated 23p to 494p and international trader Inchcape came off another 7p to 153p.Until the latest bout of Asian flu, hopes were high that the stock market would soon achieve a new closing peak, topping the 5,330.8 hit in October. The bugbear of Asia returned to haunt the stock market. Apologies in advance, yours etc.)To be fair, there are indications that Mr Cook’s prickliness (which is evenly spread; anybody who has ever asked a sensitive question has received a tetchy answer) is directed especially towards journalists, who many would regard as fair game.

But if Mr Cook were to combine his characteristic impatience with the traditional British hauteur on European issues in the next six months, the results could be lethal. One of the reasons that Margaret Thatcher got so little out of Europe was because she never understood that there may be more than one way of looking at things. Europeans do not like being lectured by the least enthusiastic member of the EU team on how they should improve their game – a lesson that Britain has still not fully understood.For the moment, things have got off to a not-bad start. Britain – at the prompting of Germany, though that bit got lost somewhere along the way – is keen for the EU to take an initiative to stem the horrors in Algeria. That is a good thing – if only in the sense that any initiative is better than none.

This time (in sharp contrast to the beginning of the wars of Yugoslavia, with absurd talk of “The Hour of Europe”), nobody thinks Europe has a neat, off-the-peg solution. Greater modesty is in order.The change in tone towards an ethical foreign policy could still bear fruit – on a drip-drip basis, not necessarily with spectacular fireworks.Admittedly, some in the Foreign Office remain sceptical “Pragmatism” is a word that diplomats are very attached to. But Mr Cook is responsible for his own hesitations, too; it’s not just a Yes, Minister culture. He still seems reluctant to admit that there are hesitations.Meanwhile, paradoxically, there is little boasting about the small indications that things really have changed, beyond the soundbite rhetoric. Thus, for example, Mr Cook has upgraded diplomats’ regular consultations and training sessions with human rights groups – in what many at the Amnesty International regard as clear evidence of a change in attitude. And yet, the Foreign Office is deeply reluctant to discuss those sessions, as though they were faintly shameful.

Support given by Britain to democratic media, for example in Serbia and in Nigeria, has been almost equally discreet.All of which matters Everybody agrees that Mr Cook is enormously clever. On the question of whether he also has a heart, opinions are divided. If he proves better at point-scoring than dialogue, few of his European colleagues will be impressed. But if it turns out that he has a heart as well as a brain, then both Britain and Europe could stand to benefit.. But I hope it is permissible to raise what seem to be important questions, without being regarded as a Malicious Moron. When a Channel Four News interviewer raised doubts about policy on Nigeria, Mr Cook’s crushing response suggested that he regarded the question itself as illegitimate.

Making the questioner look foolish sometimes seems more important to him than persuading people to accept his point of view.(One almost feels obliged to insert an explanatory footnote: Dear Foreign Secretary, yes I do support the idea of an ethical foreign policy. When an interviewer on BBC Radio Four’s Today asked an innocuous question about the tightrope act of support for commerce vs ethical policies, Mr Cook dismissed the question as “facile”. His wife has now rubbed public salt in the marital wounds, claiming that the affair with his secretary Gaynor Regan was not his first, and noting that it is “selfish that men should expect it all”.None the less, Mr Cook’s prickliness predates his domestic dramas. Admittedly, the photographers’ long lenses which (together with a phone-call from Alastair Campbell, the Downing Street press secretary) helped trigger the end of his marriage have meant that he is understandably not fond of the media. Officials insist that there is absolutely no connection between this lack of time and the undeniable fact that China would go gently berserk if Mr Cook, who visits Peking later this month, were to meet Mr Wei.In reality, the connection is clear: if Britain was determined to send a strong signal of support, then even a two-minute photo-opportunity with Mr Cook would suffice.Mr Cook sometimes still gives the impression that he regards even lightly implied criticism as demonstrating hostile intent. The contradictions only arise if the public propaganda insists that the government is a compromise-free zone.