'I'm no James Bond': Sir Ed Davey says he was offered MI6 job but turned it down
Sir Ed Davey has claimed he turned down a role in Britain’s intelligence service while studying at Oxford University.
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The Liberal Democrats leader said he was studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Jesus College in 1988 when he was allegedly approached by a member of MI6.
He was tapped on the shoulder but rejected the offer as he “would have made a very bad spy”, Sir Ed claimed.
“I applied for the Civil Service and they [MI6] sent me this letter out of the blue, saying there were some positions open in the Civil Service that weren’t open to competition and we’d like you to apply,” he told the Walking the Dog podcast.
Sir Ed added: “I went and you had to tell them the inside leg measurement of your great aunt with all these sort of background checks. And then I went to an interview. He said before we go any further I’d have to sign the Official Secrets Act, so I did.
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“He said, you’ve probably guessed this is for the Secret Service and he told me what we’d do, how I’d learn to be a spy. You’d learn languages, all that sort of training.
“There’s a joke about ‘007 Davey’ but I don’t labour that point, I probably would be a very bad spy.”
He added that a career in intelligence “wasn’t attracting me” due to the secrecy of it.
“I asked if I could tell my girlfriend or my wife and he said possibly, but there’s this whole life of secrecy which wasn’t attracting me. I like James Bond films and all that, but I realised it wasn’t like that,” Sir Ed said.
Sir Ed later worked as a financial analyst before becoming an MP.
He served as the Member of Parliament for Kingston and Surbiton from 1997 to 2015, and from June 2017 until the snap election he was called in early November 2019.
Sir Ed was then re-elected on 12 December in the General Election 2019, after which he became an Acting Leader of the Party and also Spokesperson for the Economy & Social Justice.
He has been campaigning on key issues including stopping a harmful Brexit, Climate Emergency, and for local police and train services.
Sir Ed was elected to be the Leader of the Party in August 2020.