International espionage: what a glamorous life it all must seem. You join the service, hoping to match wits with Her Majesty’s foes, full of dreams of Bond-like action sequences and Le Carré-esque intrigue. And instead you end up having to write to Labour MPs, begging them to stop sending you so many irrelevant letters for their own political purposes.
For Jonathan Evans, the former Director-General of MI5, that is indeed the sad fate that has befallen him. Having held the post of Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life since 2018, Lord Evans has been bombarded in recent months with a flurry of letters from Labour shadow ministers, urging him to probe dastardly Tory MPs for various indiscretions.
Now though, it appears the long-suffering spook has had enough. In a seething letter, published today, Evans has responded to another such request for an inquiry into Priti Patel by Nick Thomas-Symonds, who as shadow Home Secretary, presumably aspires to one day have responsibility for the Secret Service which Evans once led.
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