Espionage and the long shadow of British competence
Who killed Yevgeny Prigozhin? As Whodunnits go, it seems somehow lacking in mystery. Not though for Russian state television.
Ihor Markov, a former pro-Russian MP in Ukraine and now a political pundit, reckons that only two countries had the wherewithal to knock off Prigozhin. It could have been the US, but they would have opted for a Hollywood blockbuster like the rocket that killed Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards general. Which leaves only MI6: “Cynical! Brazen! Very well honed.” Case closed.
A similar theory was broadcast on Russian television last year, according to which British intelligence framed Russia for atrocities at Bucha, apparently by scattering corpses in compromising locations. “This was done by professionals, probably British”, said the academic-turned-pundit Gevorg Mirzayan. “They’re the best in the area of information operations.”
The extraordinary thing here is that for this propaganda to ring true, it must somehow resonate with its target audience’s understanding of how the world is.
Yet the vision of Britain this reflects, that of a ruthlessly competent state quietly exercising its will on the international stage, appears to us outlandish and darkly comic because it jars so spectacularly with the available evidence.
It’s safe to assume a government whose political preoccupation is trying and failing to stop small boats reach the Kent coast is not likely to be spending time devising ways to make warlords explode mid-air. Or that an administration with this level of Machiavellian, four-dimensional chess cunning at its disposal would have engineered a Brexit process culminating in Britain delaying the imposition of border checks — the border checks it was demanding the right to impose — for a fifth time.
So it is worth considering the origin of this stereotype of British competence.
Matthew Parker, a historian who has written on Ian Fleming, noted that there is an uncanny portent in From Russia With Love, with a Soviet intelligence chief stating that Americans, “try to do everything with money… England is another matter”.
Russia certainly has a long and involved history with 007. Putin’s earliest television appearance subtly linked him to Stierlitz, Russia’s answer to Bond. (This is described wonderfully in the early pages of Catherine Belton’s Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West.)
Imaginary British competence also figured in the Brexit negotiations. I remember listening to a French fishing representative give evidence to a committee French MPs in late 2016.
“To finish on a lighthearted observation: the English are fine negotiators, they are redoubtable. Remember in the Second World War they succeeded in making the Germans believe they were invading at Dunkirk.” (See transcript Hubert Carré’s evidence here.)
A few months later in Davos I heard Pascal Lamy, the French former WTO boss, jokingly make the same reference to Operation Bodyguard —the extraordinary Second World War feat of tricking the Germans into thinking that the Normandy landings were a decoy and that the main D-Day invasion force would target Pas-de-Calais.
In short, it is a result of a long-lingering cultural after-image. And, perhaps, an example of how soft power can leave an unhelpful residue.
