The Right Honourable Sir Malcolm Leslie Rifkind, KCMG, QC (born in Edinburgh on June 21 1946), is a Scottish and British Conservative politician, and former Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
He became member of Parliament for Edinburgh Pentlands in 1974, and was promoted into the cabinet as Secretary of State for Scotland in 1986. In 1990 he moved by John Major to Transport, and became Defence Secretary in 1992. In the dying years of the Major administration he was the Foreign Secretary.
On December 21, 1988, Rifkind was the first British government official in Lockerbie after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, as Scottish secretary. After touring the wreckage, he gave the first indication that the plane had exploded. He told reporters: "The aircraft clearly experienced some form of explosion, which has resulted in many parts of the aircraft falling in many different locations--that we know. But what might have caused that to happen, I'm sorry, I could not even speculate." It would later turn out that a terrorist bomb blew up the aircraft.
In the 1997 election he lost his Pentlands seat as part of the massacre of the Tories in Scotland and Wales, and was succeded by Labour candidate Lynda Clark. However, unlike many Tories who either retired from politics or tried to find a safe seat elsewhere to contest, he stood again for the same seat against Clark for the 2001 general election, and improved his showing somewhat.
In February 2004 he was selected as the Tory candidate for the constituency of Kensington and Chelsea, one of the party's safest seats, on the retirement from politics of Michael Portillo after the following general election.
He has been a critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Tony Blair government's support of it. He is a patron of the Tory Reform Group.
