object to in the comments. I was really in fact in the interview calling for the US to reach out to France and others to make sure it was demonstrating a broad multilateral coalition and within a single news cycle of my calling for that, it was doing it." He added "I may be prophetic but I wasn't critical". When Bolton later announced his own resignation in early December, Malloch Brown made his delight clear, telling reporters "No comment – and you can say he said it with a smile". In May 2007, George Soros's Quantum Fund announced the appointment of Malloch Brown as vice-president. He was named vice-chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute, two other important Soros organisations. Political career (2007–2009) On 27 June 2007, it was announced Malloch Brown was joining the government of incoming Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Minister of State for Africa and the United Nations at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Following his appointment, he was created a life peer on 9 July 2007 as Baron Malloch-Brown, of St Leonard's Forest in the County of West Sussex. He was also appointed to the Privy Council. Plans for his appointment and peerage had been leaked to The Observer in November 2006. At the time, The Daily Telegraph said "While the aid agencies and liberals were still toasting the arrival of 'Saint Mark' to Whitehall, the neo-cons on both sides of the Atlantic were throwing darts at photographs of their devil. [He] divides opinion between those who see him as the great hope for Africa and a principled opponent of the war in Iraq, and those who believe that he is an anti-American egotist who defended Kofi Annan over the oil-for-food scandal." On becoming a government minister, The Observer reported he had resigned his position as vice-chairman of Quantum Fund. Following the decision by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to refer the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi back for a second appeal against conviction, Dr Hans Köchler, UN-appointed international observer at the Lockerbie trial, wrote on 4 July 2007 to Malloch Brown reiterating his call for a "full and independent public inquiry of the Lockerbie case". Köchler addressed the letter also to First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. In November 2007, the conservative British magazine The Spectator drew some attention with