The new head of MI6 has been welcomed with affection by Ukrainian nationalists. Blaise Metreweli’s Ukrainian grandfather was co-opted as part of the Nazi war machine and well known as a ‘hands on’ exponent of terror against Jews and Communists following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Rape, torture, murder.

After the war, like many Nazi’s, he just ‘vanished’. Unbelievably, not insignificant numbers of such dubious Ukrainian nationalists were given ‘refuge’ from justice in the UK and Canada and have been used for decades to undermine Russia by MI6 and the CIA.

His wife and son, Metreweli’s father, eventually finished up in Britain where she re-married and secured a sanitised name-change. Gone was the notorious ‘Butcher’ reputation given to the loathsome Constantine Dobrowolski. The Secret Intelligence Services screen relatives and so I assume that her notoriously evil grandfather must have surfaced in any vetting.

However, her opening remarks as head of MI6 do not reassure me that her grandfather’s legacy has been discarded. She maintains ‘We are operating in a space between peace and war’ and went on to talk about intensifying the work of the Special Operations Executive – the organisation created during the last war to carry out sabotage and terrorist attacks against the Nazi’s.

If I was the Foreign Secretary I would be concerned at this kind of sabre-rattling. You don’t have to be much of a sleuth to detect the hand of Britain behind some of the ‘special operations’ in the war in Ukraine. The attacks on the Kerch Bridge from Crimea to Russia, the attempt by British trained marines to cross the Dnieper at Krynky ‘to liberate Crimea’, and the invasion of the Russian Kursk Oblast are all rumoured to be British inspirations. All have the same thing in common – they failed and left mountains of Ukrainian corpses.

Blaise Metrewelli could usefully take advice from Sir Maurice Oldfield, Britains most effective MI6 supremo. He favoured intelligence gathering rather than James Bond adventures. He prioritised gathering accurate information so reasoned decisions could be made by elected politicians. In this way he kept us out of Vietnam and if he had still been head of MI6, when Blair was trying to ‘manufacture consent’ for the Iraq War, would probably have seen that off too – and avoided all the opprobrium that has followed.

So lay off the threats Ms Metreweli. I’ve no doubt that that was what your opposite Russian number Sergey Naryshkin told you in your recent telephone discussion. It is crucial in times of conflict with nuclear armed powers to keep channels open to avoid the risk of escalation. People should understand that Russia’s weaponry is now very significantly superior to that of the UK.

Your bullish threats to do damage to Russia ‘in the space between peace and war’ massively misreads the mood of the British public who have been led to believe that all the trouble-making is the fault of Vladimir Putin. Your threats shatter this. You have just scored an own goal.