Britain has lost confidence without Cold War threat, former MI6 chief says

Sir Richard Dearlove made the comments at the National Conservatism conference

Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 between 1999 and 2004. Reuters

Britain has lost its way without the “essential threat” of the Cold War, a former head of MI6 has said.

The UK no longer had the “cohesion and motivation” that drove Sir Richard Dearlove when he joined the service in 1966, he said.

“It never occurred to me that I was not on the side of the angels," he told the National Conservatism conference in Westminster.

“Looking back, we were self-confident without any hint of complacency.

"We took for granted the fundamental moral difference between the values we espoused and the totalitarian nature of Soviet Russia and Maoist China.

“It seems to me we have since lost our way. Without the essential threat to our way of life that was a constant feature of the Cold War, we have lost cohesion and motivation, and especially our self-confidence.

“Minority views amplified by social media have been allowed disproportionate political and social space so that the mainline political and social debate has become seriously distorted by fringe movements.”

Sir Richard, who led MI6 between 1999 and 2004, appeared at the right-wing conference as part of a panel on “national realism and foreign policy”, alongside other speakers who claimed “woke” movements had undermined security.

Discussing “active measures” — disinformation and subversion — he said they "work best in a fertile social and political environment, where naivety about Russian and Chinese intentions is rife, where doubt about our own values system and its foundations has irrational strength.

“I’m worried when I witness eminent members of our own elite doing the work of our foremost enemies for them, whether it is advocating for Huawei, refusing to publish any serious scientific study that questions the Chinese narrative on the origins of the Sars-Cov 2 virus, or promoting a settlement in the war between Russia and Ukraine that ignores the peace conditions laid down by President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy."

Sir Richard also suggested that only a revolution could end the threat from Russia.

He said the "brutality“ of the regime "leads me towards the conclusion that Russia’s political DNA is so corrupted that only another revolutionary change might rebalance it".