Well, here’s a couple: grown men are capable of acting out of bile and spite and relatedly: choose your friends wisely.

First up, Blair staying away from the funeral.

Perversely, if there is an after-life, then Cook’s probably laughing his head off. For there could be no stronger indicator than Blair’s absence from the funeral to signal that he is going to stand down as Labour leader. For good or ill, Blair had made the internal calculation that he doesn’t need to worry about votes anymore, from whatever source, and he wasn’t going to turn up and make nice over the death of a guy he didn’t like. In a career mired in his own weakness and vanity, Blair for once, just once, acted without hypocrisy.

From Blair’s viewpoint, Cook fucked him over royally over the Iraq issue and Blair doesn’t forgive or forget. In the midst of all the eulogies dedicated to Cook this week, maybe someone needs to sit down and work through Cook’s real contribution in resigning from the government. Because apart from sniping at Blair (brilliantly at times, it must be said) through the pages of The Guardian, Cook put party before principle by refusing to lead an anti-war coalition within The House.

Of course, Cook was playing a long game, awaiting the inevitable return to the front benches once Blair had been consigned to the dustbin of history, but nevertheless, when leadership was called for in giving a voice to the anti-war majority in the country, he was found wanting. Given the choice between acting as a statesman or a politician he elected to take the latter course.

And there are other grounds to think that calls for Cook’s secular canonisation are a bit premature. As Foreign Secretary, Cook was led by the nose by Albright at The State Department during Clinton’s own little sotto voce "war against terrorism". A war driven more by Clinton’s domestic problems, admittedly, than Bush’s imperial vision, but Cook’s performance as Foreign Secretary displayed its own blind adherence to the US agenda.

In brief, he’s a right-wing racing pundit and full-time buffoon who thinks that dressing in tasteless jackets is a sign of endearing eccentricity, when in fact his get-up betrays his intrinsic twatness.

His attack on Blair at the funeral was completely imbecilic on a number of grounds, not least in trampling roughshod over the unwritten rule at such sad gatherings that the service is about the deceased and the people who’ve turned up to pay their respects. It's not about people who didn’t turn up.

Paradoxically, he might have actually done Blair a favour. The Labour Party is nothing if not tribal in its recourse to instinctive loyalties, and the fat idiot’s outpourings might just guarantee Blair a less bumpy ride at the Party-only memorial service to come.

Again, if Cook was looking down on all of this, I hope he was, in this instance at least, cursing his choice of friends. But, maybe ego had something to do with it.

He would’ve been flattered by McCririck's admiration for him as an expert on horses and perhaps having his ego stroked blinded him to the fact that McCririck is no friend to social-democracy. It might be unfair, but a politician can’t have it both ways, on the one hand, declaring loyalty to The Party but feeling free to consort socially with individuals quite beyond the pale.

Yeh, I know, the list of politicians doing just this is a long one, and includes Blair in their number. But surely the singular point about Cook was his trumpeted adherence to political principle?