Gavin Williamson

Sir Gavin Williamson      (politician)
Scourge of Russia, Israel's friend
Born	Gavin Alexander Williamson 25 June 1976 Scarborough, England, UK
Alma mater	University of Bradford
Children	2
Spouse	Joanne Eland
Member of	Conservative Friends of Israel
Party	Conservative
Minister of State without Portfolio In office 25 October 2022 - 8 November 2022 Appointed by Rishi Sunak  Secretary of State for Education In office 24 July 2019 - 15 September 2021 Appointed by Boris Johnson Preceded by Damian Hinds  Secretary of State for Defence In office 2 November 2017 - 1 May 2019 Appointed by Theresa May Preceded by Michael Fallon Succeeded by Penny Mordaunt  Chief Whip of the House of Commons In office 14 July 2016 - 2 November 2017 Appointed by Theresa May  Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister In office 7 October 2013 - 13 July 2016 Appointed by David Cameron  Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Transport In office 11 September 2012 - 7 October 2013 Appointed by David Cameron  Member of Parliament for South Staffordshire In office 6 May 2010 - Present

Gavin Williamson is a British Conservative Party politician who was Minister without Portfolio in the Rishi Sunak government for a fortnight until he resigned on 9 November 2022. Previously he was Education Secretary in Boris Johnson's cabinet.

On 2 November 2017, he was appointed Secretary of State for Defence following the resignation of Sir Michael Fallon, after a series of women working in Westminster shared stories of alleged abuse and inappropriate advances.

On 1 May 2019, Gavin Williamson was sacked as Defence Secretary by Theresa May for allegedly disclosing plans to allow Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to help build the UK's 5G network. Opposition MPs said there should be a police investigation into whether the Official Secrets Act 1989 had been breached.

Statements

Criticism of Russia

Commenting after the announcement of a Ministry of Defence (MoD) spending review on 26 January 2018, Gavin Williamson accused Russia of spying on the UK's infrastructure, including energy lines and under-sea cables that provide energy and power to some three million homes:

“The plan for the Russians won’t be for landing craft to appear in the South Bay in Scarborough, and off Brighton Beach. They are going to be thinking, ‘How can we just cause so much pain to Britain?’. Damage its economy, rip its infrastructure apart, actually cause thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths, but actually have an element of creating total chaos within the country.

“Why would they keep photographing and looking at power stations, why are they looking at the interconnectors that bring so much electricity and so much energy into our country? They are looking at these things because they are saying, ‘These are the ways we can hurt Britain’”.

The Russian Embassy replied on Twitter that "[https://twitter.com/RussianEmbassy/status/956842898674339840 Some British politicians bear no responsibility for their words" while former Telegraph journalist and RT contributor Peter Oborne labelled him as "out of control". Russia’s defence ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, pithily observed:

“Gavin Williamson in his fiery crusade for military budget money appears to have lost his grasp on reason. His fears about Russia getting pictures of power plants and studying the routes of British pipelines are worthy of a comic plot or a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch.”

Support for Israel

Speaking on 2 February 2018 at the Conservative Friends of Israel’s annual Parliamentary reception, Gavin Williamson hailed Israel as a “beacon of light and hope, in a region where there is so much hatred and hurt” and said that the United Kingdom “will always be Israel’s friend.” The UK and Israel, Williamson asserted:

“have a strong and firm relationship of working together. It’s a relationship of partners… It’s a partnership of equals, a partnership of friends.”

Pentagon visit

On 1 February 2018, Gavin Williamson visited US Defense Secretary James Mattis at the Pentagon, where they discussed the threats from Daesh, Russia and North Korea.

Deploying hawkish rhetoric

While in the USA, Gavin Williamson came under fresh scrutiny after Theresa May refused to back the Defence Secretary over claims he didn’t tell the truth about a “flirtatious” relationship he had with a former junior colleague. Williamson who took over from Michael Fallon after he resigned amid sexual harassment allegations, admitted his affair in an interview with the Daily Mail on Monday 29 January 2018 when the father-of-two told the right-wing tabloid how he had a relationship with a former junior employee at fireplace firm Elgin and Hall in 2004, behind his wife’s back.

Williamson made the admission on the same day as he claimed “Russia is ready to kills Brits by the thousands,” prompting accusations that he deployed hawkish rhetoric to deflect attention away from his affair. When asked whether Williamson had been completely honest about how he departed his former job, Tory leader May – on a visit to China – fell short of outright defending him, saying:

“Gavin has told people about something that happened before he became a Member of Parliament, let alone became a minister.”

The PM also seemed to reject any similarities between Williamson and her former First Secretary, Damian Green, who was sacked after a cabinet office investigation found he had not been honest about pornographic material found on his parliamentary computer. The latest scandal is likely to deal a blow to Williamson’s reported aspirations of becoming the next PM. Williamson had already been the target of a widespread backlash, as he was appointed to the role despite having no experience as a minister or in the armed forces.

Brexit "scandal"

In October 2016, the Mail on Sunday reported that the then Chief Whip, Gavin Williamson, told Downing Street that Michael Gove had had a homosexual relationship with personal and political ally Dominic Cummings, chief strategist of the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 EU Referendum.

Honours

In May 2015 Williamson was sworn in as a member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, giving him the honorific title "The Right Honourable" for life. In the 2016 Resignation Honours List of David Cameron, Williamson was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for political and public service".

On 3 March 2022 Williamson was conferred as a Knight Bachelor as part of the 2022 Special Honours for Political Service. The honour drew disapproval from his critics, with Labour's shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson describing Williamson's record as "disgraceful" and the Liberal Democrats calling the knighthood "an insult to every child, parent and teacher who struggled through COVID against the odds". The investiture of the knighthood had been delayed while an inquiry by Sue Gray into alleged COVID-19 lockdown breaches in Downing Street was held.

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Munich Security Conference/2019	15 February 2019	17 February 2019	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 55th Munich Security Conference, which included "A Spreading Plague" aimed at "identifying gaps and making recommendations to improve the global system for responding to deliberate, high consequence biological events."
UK/Parliament/Voted YES to vaccine passports in 2021			UK/House of Commons	These members of the UK Parliament voted YES to the introduction of a "vaccine" passport in 2021

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Government set to defy JCVI advice and vaccinate healthy children 'from next week'	Article	4 September 2021	Daisy Stephens	In spite of the recommendations made by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, the British government is set to roll out COVID-19/Vaccines for children aged 12 to 15.
Document:Huawei Hypocrisy	blog post	7 May 2019	Craig Murray	Former Deputy PM Nick Clegg said GCHQ's ability "to hack anything from handsets to whole networks … needs to be much better understood".
Document:The schools scandal	Article	19 August 2020	Lewis Goodall	How a government led by technocrats nearly destroyed a generation of social mobility

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