Apart from the odd tiresome comment about being a “diversity hire” — the first female head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli, has had a smooth landing as the new “C” — Chief, replacing the affable Sir Richard Moore when he leaves the post in October.
It could hardly be a more significant time for a new face at the helm of the UK’s intelligence operations — albeit a face whose official picture looks in need of an upgrade, looking spookily like an AI headshot out of Abba Voyage.
Meterweli comes with a long operational career behind her running operations in the Middle East and was in the war zone during the Iraq conflict. Most recently, she served as “Q” — the traditional moniker for the role which focuses nowadays on biometric surveillance and cyber-warfare defence as well as “gadgets”. That helped her clinch the job, according to colleagues.
Moore had long encouraged a strong presence of women in jobs at MI6’s Vauxhall HQ — so the time was ripe for a female appointment. He has told me in interviews that he sees his legacy as firmly linked to making the service more diverse in gender and ethnicity. Metreweli herself has also pushed for more recruitment from neuro-diverse backgrounds.
She is personable, calm and a champion Cambridge University rower.
In an organisation which has yet to shake off a reputation for being full of “Ruperts” — well-educated and well-connected public schoolies — only Sir John Sawyers, appointed under the Blair government, was state educated. Metreweli is part of a coterie of Britain’s top spies who have grown up in well-heeled ex-pat communities — her father worked as an eminent radiologist in Hong Kong and she was privately educated while growing up there.
Being “lent” to MI5 for a stint in 2021 to focus on domestic counter-terrorism with Middle East roots was a sign of a fast rise.
As the shadow of conflict widens in Israel and Iran and there is no sign of a ruthless operation in Gaza ending soon, the flow of information from secret sources is vital — not least for a UK government which seems uncertain about how to calibrate its response to the prospect of the US joining attacks on Iran.
There was a fierce tussle with another formidable player — Barbara Woodward
Against this backdrop, Meterweli looks like a providential choice. Certainly, she was the strong preference of the outgoing Chief and internal teams to have “one of our own, with strong intelligence-gathering experience, in the field at this point”.
Put another way, that meant MI6, which is immensely aware of its history, was determined the first woman to run it would be an insider.
The result was a fierce tussle with another formidable player — Barbara Woodward, Britain’s former ambassador to China, presently the UK top representative at the UN.
Initially, there were four people in the frame — one man and two women (including Meterweli) from the intelligence services and Woodward from the Foreign Office.
The “China faction” of Woodward supporters highlighted that the strategic centrality of a rising power and simultaneously, a country the Starmer government has been courting assiduously as a trade partner. But one which is also prone to aggressive cyber and espionage attacks on the UK (including allegedly targeting the hapless Duke of York).
There is a sense that experts on the former Soviet Union, Arabists and latterly Moore (a specialist in Turkey) have edged out Sinologists. This feeling goes back to 2007, and the departure in high dudgeon of Nigel Inkster, the service’s deputy director, when was passed over for the C job.
He has also warned since that the UK became too supine towards China and last year sent a poison dart towards his old shop — saying “MI6 clearly does have difficulties, in terms of language expertise as well as awareness of Chinese history and culture”.
The Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Number 10 initially leant towards the Woodward candidacy. That sparked counter-briefings which saw her tagged as “Beijing Barbara” by China hawks, who felt that she had not been blunt enough in her stint in Beijing on touchy issues, like confronting the repression of the Muslim Uighurs.
The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves who is keen to amp up UK trade with China was also a fan — Woodward had earned political spurs leading a restructure of the Foreign Office to focus more on UK commercial priorities as well as diplomacy. There was, one Whitehall source, says “some delay and a lot of to-and-fro before the Prime Minister finally signed off the result this week.”
Another factor that clinched in for Metreweli is, bluntly, age
Another factor that clinched in for Metreweli is, bluntly, age. She turns 48 in July and is part of a first generation of “digital natives” in the spy services. Woodward is 64. As one senior insider puts it, “having the first female C come from our ranks and sending a signal to young women that foreign intelligence can be a great career is not lost on anyone”. Another advantage, says a separate security source, is that “it can be good to show up these days in meetings around the world with a Chief who will be of interest because she’s made it as a woman in a still widely male world.”
Add to that a competitive relationship with MI5, which has got itself into hot water following revelations about its lies over attempts to protect an agent who used his position to terrorise an ex-girlfriend . An apology from its chief Sir Ken McCallum has been made. But it has opened up an uncomfortable conversation about internal culture: MI6 prides itself on being the more progressive organisation.
Now that the fray is over, Woodward, who is “sanguine” (says a colleague in New York about the outcome), will swallow the defeat, host influential parties in New York and carry on dealing with the complexity of the UN in the era of Donald Trump. Metreweli, “will want the service to feel more engaged with British society at large,” says a colleague. How she goes about that task will define her leadership — as well as maybe a new headshot for the most prominent woman in the shadows of spy world.
Anne McElvoy is co-author of the Man Without a Face — Memoirs of the Spymaster Markus Wolf and executive editor at POLITICO
