Parliamentary Career
He stood unsuccessfully for Labour in the following elections:
- February 1974 General Election: Surbiton
- October 1974 General Election: Surbiton
- 1983 General Election: Croydon Central
- 1984 European Elections: London South & Surrey East division
- 1987 General Election: Peterborough
In 2003, he famously described Dr. David Kelly as "chaff" during Dr. Kelly's appearance before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. His question was:
- I reckon you are chaff; you have been thrown up to divert our probing. Have you ever felt like a fall-guy? You have been set up, have you not?
so in this context "chaff" is a reference to the radar countermeasure rather than to something of little value. It emerged during Kelly's subsequent inquest that Kelly had been deeply upset by his treatment before the Committee and he had privately described an MP, assumed to be MacKinlay, as an "utter bastard" MacKinlay reportedly apologised to Kelly's wife for the remark following Kelly's death.
According to one report, in May 2007, MacKinlay made the nomination that resulted in Gordon Brown having enough nominations to be certain of not facing a contest over the leadership of the party. However, another report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.
Read more about this topic: Andrew MacKinlay
Famous quotes containing the word career:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)