Sir Malcolm Leslie Rifkind was born on 21 June 1946 and is a British politician who served in the cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major from 1986 to 1997, and most recently as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament from 2010 to 2015.
68 Facts About Malcolm Rifkind
2.
Malcolm Rifkind served in various roles as a Cabinet minister, including Secretary of State for Scotland from 1986 to 1990, Defence Secretary from 1992 to 1995, and Foreign Secretary from 1995 to 1997.
3.
Malcolm Rifkind attempted, unsuccessfully, to be re-elected in Pentlands in 2001; the constituency was abolished before the 2005 general election and he was adopted, and subsequently elected, as the Conservative candidate for Kensington and Chelsea.
4.
Malcolm Rifkind announced his intention to seek the leadership of the party before the 2005 Conservative Party leadership election, but withdrew before polling commenced.
5.
Malcolm Rifkind stood for the Kensington seat and was elected at the 2010 general election with a majority of 8,616 votes.
6.
Malcolm Rifkind was appointed Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, on 6 July 2010.
7.
Malcolm Rifkind did not stand in the 2015 general election.
8.
In December 2015, Malcolm Rifkind was appointed a Visiting Professor by King's College, London in their Department of War Studies.
9.
Malcolm Rifkind was invited to become a Distinguished Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
10.
Malcolm Rifkind was born in Edinburgh to a Jewish family that emigrated to Britain in the 1890s from Lithuania; among his cousins were Leon and Samuel Brittan.
11.
Malcolm Rifkind was educated at George Watson's College and the University of Edinburgh where he studied law before taking a postgraduate degree in political science.
12.
Malcolm Rifkind worked as an Assistant Lecturer at the University College of Rhodesia in Salisbury from 1967 to 1968.
13.
Malcolm Rifkind was called to the Scottish Bar in 1970 and practised full-time as an Advocate until 1974.
14.
Malcolm Rifkind was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1985 and a member of the Privy Council in 1986.
15.
Malcolm Rifkind first stood for Parliament, unsuccessfully, in 1970 in the Edinburgh Central constituency.
16.
Malcolm Rifkind entered Parliament in the February 1974 general election representing Edinburgh Pentlands for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party.
17.
Malcolm Rifkind subsequently resigned from that position in protest at the decision of the Shadow Cabinet to vote against the Government's Bill for a Scottish Assembly.
18.
Malcolm Rifkind argued that as, at that time, the Conservative Party supported the principle of a Scottish Assembly, it would have been preferable either to vote for the Second Reading of the Bill or to abstain, and try to improve the Bill.
19.
Malcolm Rifkind was one of only five Ministers to serve throughout the whole 18 years of the Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
20.
Malcolm Rifkind was appointed Minister of Home Affairs and the Environment at the Scottish Office in the 1979 Thatcher Government.
21.
Malcolm Rifkind was responsible, under the Secretary of State George Younger, for relations with local government and for the police and prisons.
22.
Malcolm Rifkind was responsible for Britain's relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the European Community, and sub-Saharan Africa.
23.
Malcolm Rifkind assisted Sir Geoffrey Howe in persuading Thatcher to change the Government's policy on the Soviet Union, attended the Chequers meeting which decided to invite Soviet leaders to the United Kingdom, and was present at Chequers when Thatcher had her first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and decided that he was a Soviet leader with whom "she could do business".
24.
Malcolm Rifkind had strong links with the Solidarity movement in Poland.
25.
Jaruzelski attacked Malcolm Rifkind and cancelled a meeting he was due to have with him but Malcolm Rifkind's meeting with Solidarity created a precedent that was followed by the West German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and other Western ministers.
26.
Malcolm Rifkind was, subsequently, decorated by the non-communist democratic Polish Government for his support.
27.
Malcolm Rifkind gained a reputation as being a moderate voice on social and economic issues, and sometimes had disputes with Margaret Thatcher.
28.
Malcolm Rifkind created Scottish Homes as the Government's housing agency; and Scottish Natural Heritage which combined both the Countryside Commission for Scotland and the Nature Conservancy Council.
29.
Malcolm Rifkind transformed the Scottish Development Agency into Scottish Enterprise with much greater private sector involvement.
30.
When Malcolm Rifkind became Secretary of State his first task was to defuse a teachers dispute which was crippling Scottish education.
31.
Malcolm Rifkind sought to help the Ravenscraig steel mill which was threatened with closure.
32.
Malcolm Rifkind opposed closure by the Government arguing that the whole steel industry should be privatised and that the future of individual plants would be determined by the companies that owned them in the private sector.
33.
Malcolm Rifkind supported the introduction of the Poll Tax, which the Cabinet had approved shortly before his appointment.
34.
Malcolm Rifkind agreed with the decision proposed by his predecessor, George Younger, that the new tax should be introduced a year earlier in Scotland than in England because of the political necessity to end the domestic rates.
35.
Malcolm Rifkind subsequently accepted that the poll tax had been a major mistake by the Government.
36.
When Thatcher was challenged by Michael Heseltine for the Leadership of the Conservative Party, Malcolm Rifkind voted for her.
37.
Malcolm Rifkind supported privatisation but concluded that it would be a mistake to separate ownership of the infrastructure from the operating companies as track costs were a large percentage of their unavoidable costs.
38.
Malcolm Rifkind maintained that the competition to rail would come from air and road and not from other rail companies.
39.
Malcolm Rifkind was appointed Secretary of State for Defence after the 1992 general election.
40.
Malcolm Rifkind had already won the support of the Chiefs of Staff for this approach which provided an incentive for their cooperation in making the necessary economies.
41.
Malcolm Rifkind reformed the Reserve Forces and initiated the policy review which led to the TA and other Reservists being able to be used in operations abroad without the need for full mobilization of the whole Territorial Army as had been needed in the past.
42.
One of the most difficult problems that Malcolm Rifkind dealt with as Defence Secretary was British involvement in the Bosnian War in former Yugoslavia.
43.
Malcolm Rifkind was a strong and vocal opponent of the American proposal for "lift and strike" which would have ended the UN Arms Embargo and subjected the Bosnian Serbs to NATO bombing from the air.
44.
Malcolm Rifkind agreed with the UN and European view that such bombing would be incompatible with a UN mission on the ground and would necessitate the ending of that mission.
45.
Malcolm Rifkind expressed these views publicly in Washington as well as in London.
46.
Malcolm Rifkind had several meetings with the Chinese Foreign Minister both in Beijing and in London, as well as with the Hong Kong Governor, Chris Patten, and elected Hong Kong politicians.
47.
Malcolm Rifkind received a knighthood in John Major's resignation honours, becoming a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, in recognition of his work for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
48.
On 8 June 2005, a month after the Conservative defeat at the 2005 general election, Malcolm Rifkind stated that it was "quite likely" that he would stand for the leadership after Michael Howard's resignation.
49.
In endorsing Clarke, Malcolm Rifkind stated that he was "head and shoulders" above the other candidates, and had both the experience and popular appeal to take on Labour.
50.
Malcolm Rifkind admitted that he had not wished to remain a Shadow cabinet minister unless in the post of Shadow Foreign Secretary, but this post had gone to William Hague.
51.
Malcolm Rifkind declared his loyalty to the new party leader and remains one of the Conservative Party's most experienced senior figures.
52.
Malcolm Rifkind was Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee of the House of Commons until the dissolution of Parliament on 12 April 2010.
53.
Malcolm Rifkind was appointed Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, on 6 July 2010, a post he held until 24 February 2015.
54.
Malcolm Rifkind persuaded the Government to introduce legislation which enabled the ISC, for the first time, to be able to require, rather than request, the intelligence agencies to provide any highly classified material required by the ISC.
55.
Malcolm Rifkind supported the NATO military intervention in Libya and supplying arms to the Libyan rebels.
56.
On 28 August 2013 Malcolm Rifkind appeared to modify his anti-war principles by advocating British military intervention in the Syrian civil war, subject to certain important caveats.
57.
Malcolm Rifkind stated that the best response to proof of the Syrian Government's use of chemical weapons against its own people would be United Nations Security Council approval of proportionate and limited military action, but that securing unanimity in the Council would be unlikely, given the near-certainty of a Russian veto.
58.
Malcolm Rifkind believed that, in such a case, if there were to be a broad international consensus for such military action, including among the nations of the Arab League, the international community should not be 'paralysed' by a failure to act, and that the action should be used to target Syrian Government military sites.
59.
Malcolm Rifkind believed its purpose should be to deter the Syrian Government from using such weapons again, and to indicate that wider action would be undertaken were it to do so.
60.
On 18 March 2014, during an interview with CBC Radio News, Malcolm Rifkind spoke out against the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, stating that this risked destabilising the entire area and European politics in general.
61.
Malcolm Rifkind responded by saying that if there had to be such a list he was proud to be on it.
62.
In early 2015, Malcolm Rifkind had discussions with what he thought were representatives of a Chinese company that wanted to set up an advisory council.
63.
On 24 February 2015 Malcolm Rifkind stepped down from his position as Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee while remaining on the Committee.
64.
Malcolm Rifkind said he had stepped aside as chair of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee because he did not want the work of the committee to be "distracted".
65.
Malcolm Rifkind married Edith Amalia, daughter of Polish airforce engineer Joseph Steinberg, in London in 1970, They were the parents of Caroline, and The Times columnist Hugo Malcolm Rifkind.
66.
Malcolm Rifkind was a distant cousin of his late Conservative government colleague Leon Brittan, and is a second cousin once removed of producer and DJ Mark Ronson.
67.
Lady Malcolm Rifkind died on 20 October 2019 at the age of 72.
68.
On 1st November 2022 Malcolm Rifkind married Mrs Jennifer Bodie at Chelsea Town Hall.