In a move that has sent shockwaves through the corridors of power, the honourable Tulsi Gabbard has resigned from her perch atop the US intelligence community, citing the usual platitudes about spending more time with family. But British security sources, those chaps with the stiff upper lips and the even stiffer briefcases, are sounding the klaxons louder than a public schoolboy on a hot cross bun. They suspect chicanery, they suspect skulduggery, and they suspect that Gabbard's departure may have something to do with her refusal to join the club of spooks who believe that the best way to keep a secret is to tell everyone about it.
The resignation letter, penned on recycled parchment and scented with the faint whiff of betrayal, was delivered by bicycle courier to a bemused junior aide. Meanwhile, across the pond, the British Secret Intelligence Service is reportedly in a flat spin, with MI6 agents choking on their cucumber sandwiches. 'This is a disaster,' one source whispered, adjusting his monocle.
'Gabbard was the only one who knew where we hid the Crown Jewels.' The Kremlin watches with glee, the Chinese with inscrutable smiles, and the rest of us with a profound sense of déjà vu. For what is intelligence but the art of knowing which way the wind blows, and what is power but the ability to change its direction?
Gabbard, it seems, has decided to become a weathervane of another sort, leaving her former colleagues to flap in the draft. The real question, the one that keeps the mandarins of Whitehall awake at night, is not why she left, but what she took with her. Perhaps a few state secrets, perhaps a recipe for proper scones, perhaps just the last shred of dignity in a profession that long ago traded it for a gin and tonic.
