By John Woodcock
It is not every day that one of the best speeches you have ever read drops into your lap and you are asked to deliver it in front of a packed, appreciative audience.
If I had known that Making the progressive case for Israel was going to be the last thing that its brilliant author would ever write, I would have been barely able to get the words out.
So many moving tributes have already been made to David Cairns by people who knew that kind, effervescent and compellingly passionate man far better than me.
But David’s absence from the excellent and important We Believe in Israel conference in London yesterday, where again I had the sad honour of deputising for him, highlighted that a lasting and fitting tribute would be for us to advance the campaign he crafted as the chair of Labour friends of Israel.