Corbyn would be disastrous for UK intelligence
Relationships with the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia are likely to break down if the Labour leader becomes PM
It cannot have been easy for the leaders of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service to invite Jeremy Corbyn into their inner sanctum to explain how they defend the realm against Britain’s foes.
It is, of course, part and parcel of an intelligence officer’s daily routine to get a better feel for how important figures might react in any given situation. Even so, extending an invitation to a politician like Mr Corbyn, who has spent his entire political career consorting with those deemed to be enemies of the British state, cannot have been an easy call.
The official explanation given by MI6, as the service is more commonly known, for inviting Mr Corbyn and Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, into the heart of Britain’s intelligence establishment was the desire to acquaint them with the organisation’s operational structure, and its relationship with the rest of the Whitehall bureaucracy.
Intelligence chiefs, though, will also have been keen to get a sense of how the hard-left cabal that currently controls Labour might approach key national security issues in the event of them winning the next election.
MI6, together with MI5, the domestic security service, is, after all, the very embodiment of the “deep state” the more extreme Corbynistas have in their sights. They have been unhappy with MI5 after The Daily Telegraph revealed last year that the security service opened a file on Mr Corbyn over concerns that his association with the IRA while serving as a backbench MP posed a threat to national security.
More recently, the Corbynistas vented their dissatisfaction with MI6 at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool when Andrew Murray, the quasi-marxist former head of the Stop the War Coalition who now advises the Labour leader on foreign policy, threatened mass protests if the “deep state” tried to thwart Mr Corbyn’s foreign policy agenda.
Presumably, this would see a Corbyn government establishing full diplomatic relations with the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, while cosying up to the Kremlin.
It would require an upgrade in relations with Iran, a country the Labour leader knows well from the estimated £20,000 he has pocketed from his guest appearances on the regime-backed channel Press TV, which is now banned in the UK for pumping out pro-iranian propaganda.
The disastrous impact a Corbyn-led government would have on Britain’s global standing is one thing. Of even greater concern, however, would be the very real damage it would inflict on the ability of our intelligence and security services to operate effectively.
The pre-eminence of organisations such as MI6 depends to a significant extent on the exclusive network of intelligence-sharing alliances they can draw upon. Foremost among these is the Five Eyes alliance set up at the end of World War Two, comprising Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US and Britain. It is widely regarded as the most important intelligencesharing network ever created, and Britain’s role as a founder member has been the source of much envy from our European rivals.
It is highly unlikely, though, that our partners, especially in the US, would continue to share high-grade intelligence with London if there were even the slightest suspicion that, with Mr Corbyn resident in Downing Street, it might find its way to the Kremlin, or one of the legion of radical Islamist groups that the Corbynistas tend to favour.
The same goes for the more sensitive relationship Britain’s intelligence agencies have developed with Israel. There have been occasions in the not-too-distant past when relations between MI6 and Mossad, its Israeli equivalent, have been strained, not least when the Israelis were caught red-handed trying to mount an assassination attempt in London.
These days, though, the two services enjoy a more professional interaction, one based on their mutual desire to contain the threat Iran poses to the stability of the Middle East. It is difficult to see how this might survive if Britain had a government which was more sympathetic to the oppressive Islamist agenda of groups like Hamas than the democratic values of the Jewish state.
MI6’S long-standing intelligence cooperation with Saudi Arabia would be another obvious victim of a Corbyn government. The Corbynistas have had a field day lambasting the Saudis, and the British Government’s relationship with Riyadh, over the Jamal Khashoggi affair. But while certain Saudis have clearly been involved in committing an horrific crime, MI6 remains keen to maintain the same level of intelligence-sharing with its Saudi opposite numbers. It has helped to thwart a number of Islamist-inspired terror attacks, both in Britain and elsewhere.
It is inconceivable, given the Corbynistas’ visceral hatred of the Saudis, that this relationship could survive a Corbyn government. For, as the Labour leader has consistently demonstrated throughout his 35-year parliamentary career, he is always more at home consorting with Britain’s enemies than supporting long-standing allies.