THE LATEST | CANADAPeter Hitchens: Last week the head of SIS, the ultra-mysterious, vaguely unreal Blaise Metreweli, appeared in semi-public. She chose not to venture beyond her own private dining room at SIS’s grandiose new HQ.
After bestowing a sweet smile on the BBC’s intrepid security correspondent, Frank Gardner, she launched into a barrage of official flannel and contentious politics, in which she tiptoed around China, which has been busy all week trampling on the agreement it signed with us to respect freedom in Hong Kong, by jailing the dissident Jimmy Lai, a British citizen. But she spoke of Russia almost as if we were at war with Moscow, where in fact we still have an embassy, and the BBC keeps an excellent correspondent.
Is this her job? I would love it if Parliament would actually debate the Russia-Ukraine issue, but it never does, as there no longer seem to be any independent-minded MPs…