Spies shouldn’t be political

Now that events in Ukraine are restoring a sense of proportion about the difference between aggressive autocracies and free countries, it seems almost incredible that, only last year, sporting teams etc were all but compelled to ‘take the knee’ in deference to Black Lives Matter. One official prominent in this obeisance (metaphorical not literal in his case) was Sir Stephen Lovegrove. As Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, he emailed staff in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, using the BLM hashtag, and castigating the racism of his own department. When challenged about creating this official link with a hard-left organisation with borderline racist views against whites, Sir Stephen defended himself, saying his was ‘Not a political position whatsoever. It’s not a gesture of support for any particular organisation’. In 2021, Sir Stephen was promoted to the post of National Security Adviser, an appointment which caused some dismay in the world of defence and security.