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David Davis MP awarded a very honourable title by Malcolm Rifkind Thus reports the BBC:
Conservative MP David Davis said the Intelligence and Security Committee had been “captured by the agencies they are supposed to be overseeing”. And ex-chairman Sir Malcolm Rifkind acted as a “spokesman” for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ rather than a watchdog.
Sir Malcolm said the criticisms were “ludicrous” and had no basis in fact. He said Mr Davis had been “captured” by the civil liberties lobby.
If David Davis is the nice fellow that I think he is, he should send Rifkind a friendly ‘thank you’ note for making such a kind remark 😉
Sometimes I think David Davis is the best Prime Minister we never had, the British Barry Goldwater. But instead we got that twerp David Cameron.
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In his November 2013 Radio 4 reminiscences Norma Tebbit said that every government department tended to end up seeing itself as the spokesman to government for the interest it regulated. So in his day the Department of Employment tended to represent the trade union bosses and the Foreign Office represented the interests of foreigners. The same may well happen with parliamentary committees and their chairmen.
Perry,
Absolutely!
Sadly the under 30’s will regard him as, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, a closet agent of the scary extreme right.
The security agencies in ‘straya have been captured by the Left.
Yes Perry, he was a sorely missed opportunity much like Goldwater and Rifkind is the classic “don’t rock the boat Tory”.
A twerp. That is being mild, though succinct
I liked David Davis as well, although he lost out more to Ian Duncan Smith than Cameron. In fact, it was around that time when the electorate was showing no interest in David Davis (and to a lesser extent, IDS) that I came to realize the British electorate would never subscribe to my views: the points on which they were getting criticized I thought they were too weak on.
Davis speaks sense but I don’t think things would be much different if he’d won all things considered – LDs, political realities etc.
Yes Perry.
David Davis – the Prime Minister we should have had.
If David Davis wasn’t the best Prime Minister you never had, he was certainly the best Leader of the Opposition you never had. Maybe the Blair & brown years mightn’t have wreaked less havoc. Or even have been curtailed.
Even if he’d never been PM, it’s highly unlikely Call-me-Dave would have.
I think it was the book “Free to choose”, by Friedman, that first alerted me to the fact that ‘regulators’ tend to become tax-payer funded lobbyists for the people they were supposed to watch over. How old is that book?
I never warmed to Rifkind. Too much of the clever-dick. That he was a foreign office type out of the Douglas Hurd mould did not help his case. Weapons-grade tosser.