Steven King

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Public affairs firm APCO Worldwide has signed up the comms chief at the right-leaning think tank Policy Exchange.
Steven King leaves Policy Exchange after two years as external relations director.
The think tank is said to have close links to Tory leader David Cameron. It was set up in 2002 by Nicholas Boles, now Boris Johnson's chief of staff at City Hall, and Michael Gove, now in the shadow cabinet.

Before joining Policy Exchange, King spent six years as an advisor to the former First Minister of Northern Ireland David Trimble.[1]


Views

On Gaza

In January 2009, King suggested that Israel's Operation Cast Lead offensive in the Gaza Strip was necessary to pave the way for negotiations with Hamas:

The difference between the situation today in Gaza/Israel and in the 1990s in relation to the IRA should be blindingly obvious. The republican movement was looking for a way out of its self-destructive and counterproductive violence; Hamas believes it’s on a roll towards its ultimate aim of a Jew-free Palestine on the whole territory of Israel.
One of Jerusalem’s key objectives in Gaza — supported quietly by Arab governments — is to inject some realism into Hamas, just as the British and Irish security forces did to the IRA. We should recall it was not a short process: it took years, decades in fact. And even then, the IRA had to observe a unilateral ceasefire before they could join talks: the RUC, gardaí, British army and the Irish defence forces were scarcely confined to barracks.[2]

External Resources

References

  1. King leaves Tory think tank for lobbying role, by David Singleton, PRweek.com, 27 May 2008.
  2. Steven King, Government line on Gaza suggests we have forgotten our own history, Irish Examiner 7 January 2009.