M16 chief’s admission comes amid backdrop of intelligence agency’s ‘ambitious plans’ to tackle barriers to women’s careers
It is a very English crisis. In the past, MI6 has faced down accusations it was involved in cases of torture and rendition and only slowly admitted that sources who claimed that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the 2003 war were wrong.
But when it emerged in the Guardian this week that Sir Richard Moore, the current chief of the foreign intelligence agency, was a member of the men-only Garrick club, it prompted an almost immediate response. For an organisation focused on shaking off images of Oxbridge-stuffed shirt elitism, the revelation instantly touched a nerve.
