page_title: Malcolm Rifkind
section_title: Leadership contender and thereafter
hierarchical_section_title: Malcolm Rifkind / Election defeat and return to parliament / Leadership contender and thereafter
context_page_description: Sir Malcolm Leslie Rifkind KCMG QC is a British politician who served in various roles as a Cabinet minister under Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, including Secretary of State for Scotland, Defence Secretary, and Foreign Secretary.
  Rifkind was the MP for Edinburgh Pentlands from 1974 to 1997. In 1997, his party lost power and he lost his seat to the Labour Party. He 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. He announced his intention to seek the leadership of the party before the 2005 Conservative Party leadership election, but withdrew before polling commenced.
  Rifkind stood for the Kensington seat and was elected at the 2010 general election with a majority of 8,616 votes. He was appointed Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, on 6 July 2010. In January 2015 he was appointed by the OSCE as a member of their Eminent Persons Panel on European Security.
context_section_description: On 8 June 2005, a month after the Conservative defeat in the 2005 general election, Rifkind stated that it was "quite likely" that he would stand for the leadership after Michael Howard's resignation. Rifkind subsequently confirmed this on 14 August, although admitting that he had a "mountain to climb", and receiving sparse support amongst Conservative MPs, with several exceptions such as Crispin Blunt.
  Despite this, Rifkind went through to the "conference stage" of the leadership process, in which each candidate was given speaking time to address the Conservative Party Conference directly. In his speech, Rifkind declared that Conservatives had to be "pragmatic, sensitive, and moderate", and stress their "unique combination of principle and patriotism". The speech won eight rounds of applause from the conference, with nearly a minute-long finale.
  The speech did not galvanise Rifkind's candidacy, however, which had always been regarded as a long shot – bookmakers had him at 50–1 and a poll found that only 4% of Conservative voters supported his candidacy. Consequently, on 11 October 2005 he announced that he was withdrawing from the leadership contest and that he would be supporting Kenneth Clarke's candidacy, acknowledging that "There is no realistic prospect of me coming through". In endorsing Clarke, Rifkind stated that he was "head and shoulders" above the other candidates, and had both the experience and popular appeal to take on Labour.
  On 7 December 2005 he left the Conservative front bench as incoming leader David Cameron formed his team. 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. Rifkind declared his loyalty to the new party leader and remains one of the Conservative Party's most experienced senior figures.
  In December 2008 he became a leading spokesman of the Global Zero movement, which includes over 300 eminent leaders and over 400,000 citizens from around the world working toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons by multilateral negotiation. In July 2010, he was appointed by the Secretary General of the Commonwealth as a member of the Eminent Persons Group, chaired by a former Prime Minister of Malaysia, which has been requested to report to the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on recommendations for the future revitalisation of the Commonwealth.
  He was Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee of the House of Commons until the dissolution of the House of Commons on 12 April 2010. When the Kensington and Chelsea constituency was realigned to create the new seats of Chelsea and Fulham and Kensington, Rifkind stood for the latter seat and was elected at the 2010 general election with a 50.1% share of total votes cast, with a majority of 8,616 votes.
caption: Rifkind speaking to Policy Exchange in 2012
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-FZ8", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 10.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2012:03:15 11:36:47", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 14, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Image ExifOffset": "448", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1074", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "11234", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/30", "EXIF FNumber": "33/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:03:15 18:46:29", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:03:15 18:46:29", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Fine weather", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "383/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3072", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2304", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "948", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "230", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}