Britain’s Shrug: Talent Versus Ancestry

London Letter

Other democracies place a premium on symbolism. Britain prefers pragmatism. Competence is celebrated; ancestry is waved away. It is a habit that has allowed spies to keep their pensions, plunderers to be bronzed

By Shyam Bhatia

On October 1, Blaise Metreweli will take over as the first woman to lead Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. Whitehall is preparing to hail it as a landmark: a career officer with three decades of service, fluent in Arabic, a veteran of Middle Eastern operations, and architect of MI6’s technology strategy.

Yet her rise comes with a shadow. Earlier this year The Times revealed that her grandfather, Constantine Dobrowolski, was identified in German archives as a Nazi collaborator. Known as “The Butcher,” he was linked to the killing of Jews and resistance fighters in the Second World War.

Blaise Metreweli becomes first female MI6 chief in 116-year history. Pic – Ujasusi Blog

In response to my query, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office offered this: “Blaise Metreweli never knew or ever met her paternal grandfather. Blaise’s ancestry is characterised by conflict and division and as is the case for many with Eastern European heritage, only partially understood. It is precisely this complex heritage which has contributed to her commitment to prevent conflict and protect the British public from modern threats.” That, in essence, is the official shrug.

Policymakers are not naïve. They knew the Nazi connection would surface. That they pressed ahead anyway shows how highly they value her. Metreweli is unusual among British spymasters.

She speaks Arabic fluently, and unlike many chiefs who rise through management, she spent years in operational roles across the Middle East. In an era when linguistic skills are scarce, she could run assets directly rather than through interpreters.

She also broke the mould by crossing into MI5, where she ran hostile-states counter-intelligence. That role meant tackling Russian, Chinese and Iranian penetrations on home soil — an unusual crossover for an MI6 officer.

Most recently, she served as MI6’s Director-General for Technology and Innovation, informally “Q.” She has been credited with pulling the Service into the digital age, developing tools to confront cyber intrusions and AI-driven espionage. In 2024 she was awarded a CMG for services to British foreign policy. Colleagues describe her as steady, professional, and scandal-free. Whitehall’s calculation is clear: her skills are rare, her record is clean, and she is uniquely qualified to face the challenges of Russia, China, Iran, and Islamist networks. The ancestry is treated as a footnote.

Elsewhere the story would play differently. In Germany, the very notion of a Nazi collaborator’s descendant leading the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) the country’s foreign intelligence service, is inconceivable. The German word Vergangenheitsbewältigung — “working through the past” — describes a collective duty of remembrance.

Even a faint family link to Nazism can derail a career. High office demands not only competence but symbolic purity. In Israel, the symbolism would be equally explosive. Imagine Metreweli, after a successful tenure, appointed ambassador to Tel Aviv. Sending the granddaughter of a Nazi collaborator to represent Britain would be seen not as neutral but as grotesque.

In Washington, the idea of Osama bin Laden’s grandchild being appointed Director of the CIA is unimaginable. The symbolism alone would sink any nomination, however brilliant the candidate’s record. Congress would erupt, the media would howl, and the White House would retreat within hours. In America, association with atrocity is a disqualifier. In Britain, it is a shrug.

This is not new. Britain has a long record of overlooking atrocity when it suits. Anthony Blunt, a Soviet spy at the heart of the Cambridge ring, was exposed in 1979 but kept his pension and lived out his days quietly, punished only by the loss of his knighthood. Robert Clive was condemned in Parliament for plunder in India yet is still honoured with statues in Shrewsbury and outside the Foreign Office, while his loot is celebrated as heritage in British museums.

General Reginald Dyer, architect of the Amritsar massacre in 1919, was officially censured but pensioned off comfortably after the British public raised a subscription in his honour.

William George Archer, a colonial magistrate who ordered troops to fire on unarmed student protesters in Bihar in 1942, killing seven teenagers, later returned to London as a curator at the V&A and is remembered mainly as a scholar of Indian art. The pattern is consistent: brutality abroad, rehabilitation at home. Men who presided over killings and loot returned not in disgrace but as honoured servants of the state.

Metreweli herself cannot be blamed for her bloodline. She is not complicit in her grandfather’s crimes. But ancestry carries symbolic weight. If she succeeds, she may be remembered as the first female “C,” the spymaster who modernised MI6. If she falters, headlines may not dwell on cyber tools or Arabic fluency but on “the Butcher’s granddaughter.”

Abroad, the risk is greater. In Berlin and Tel Aviv, the past is never just a footnote. In Washington, the CIA–bin Laden analogy would strike home immediately. Whitehall is betting that her record will eclipse the shadow. But history has a way of intruding at awkward moments.

Britain has played this game before. When Keir Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington, he knew the baggage: the Epstein connection, the history of controversy. He judged that the pluses outweighed the negatives.

For a time, the calculation seemed sound, until fresh disclosures about Epstein brought the whole appointment crashing down. Whitehall is making the same gamble with Blaise Metreweli. They know the shadow of her grandfather; they believe her record eclipses it. The risk is that, as with Mandelson, the past may yet return to demand its price.

What this appointment reveals is less about Metreweli herself than about Britain. Other democracies place a premium on symbolism, sometimes excessively, sometimes cruelly.

Britain prefers pragmatism. Competence is celebrated; ancestry is waved away. It is a habit that has allowed spies to keep their pensions, plunderers to be bronzed, and butchers to be buried with honour. And now it allows a Nazi collaborator’s granddaughter to rise to the pinnacle of British intelligence.

No one should be judged guilty for the crimes of their forebears. But societies are judged by what they shrug off, and what they cannot forgive. Germany insists on remembrance. Israel guards it as survival. America politicises it into disqualification. Britain, alone, shrugs.

Shyam Bhatia is a London-based Indian-born British journalist, writer, and war reporter. He has covered conflicts in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Sudan, and is a former diplomatic editor for The Observer. His career also includes roles as US correspondent and Foreign Editor for the Deccan Herald (Bangalore) and Editor of Asian Affairs magazine (London).

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 26 September 2025