UK close to appointing first female head of MI6

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The UK government is close to selecting its first female head of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, with two women in the final race for the top job at the agency tasked with the dangerous work of recruiting agents to spy for Britain overseas.

In the past few weeks, four candidates who had been shortlisted to lead the UK’s foreign intelligence service have been whittled down to two, according to people familiar with the process.

The final pair in the running for a job traditionally known by the code name “C” are Barbara Woodward, at present the UK’s permanent representative to the UN and a former ambassador to China, and a female candidate from inside MI6.

Given the secrecy surrounding SIS staffing, the chief is the only member of the spy agency who is “avowed”, or publicly named. For that reason, the Financial Times is not naming the internal candidate.

The successful candidate will be the first female head of the service in more than a century since the SIS was founded. She will take up the role this autumn when the current head of the agency, Sir Richard Moore, steps down following a five-year term. Moore has been an advocate of greater diversity in the appointments process and has previously pledged that he would be the last “C” to be selected from an all-male shortlist.

The final decision will be made by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and foreign secretary David Lammy following a round of “fireside chats” with the candidates, Whitehall officials said. Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser, is also expected to have input. The process has been run by the Cabinet Office under Pat McFadden, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

The announcement of the successful candidate is expected within the next couple of weeks, three people familiar with the discussions said. It was delayed partly to avoid a clash with the publication of the UK’s long-awaited strategic defence review this week, one person said.

The other two candidates in the final four were Jonathan Allen, director-general of defence and intelligence at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and another internal MI6 candidate.

In potentially appointing a female SIS chief, the British government has proved that life does indeed imitate art. It has been 30 years since the actress Dame Judi Dench first played the head of MI6 in the James Bond film GoldenEye.

But in waiting so long for a woman leader in real life, SIS has lagged behind its sister agencies, both in the UK and across the Atlantic.

MI5, the UK’s domestic intelligence agency, has been led by two female directors-general: Dame Stella Rimington was appointed in 1992 and Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller became head of the agency 10 years later.

GCHQ, the UK’s signals intelligence agency, appointed Anne Keast-Butler as its first female director two years ago. During Donald Trump’s first term as US president, Gina Haspel was made the first female director of the CIA.

The new “C” will come into the job at a critical time for the UK’s intelligence community, as it grapples with challenges including sabotage by an increasingly belligerent Russia, a rising security threat from Iran and the increased use of cyber attacks to test the country’s critical infrastructure.

Relationships, including the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing alliance — comprising the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — have also been put under strain by Trump, who has threatened to reduce military support for Europe and to subsume Canada into the US.

While some former ambassadors, including Moore and Sir John Sawers, have progressed to the role of SIS chief, it is rare to have an external candidate with no direct experience inside the agency. Woodward is understood to have never worked directly for MI6.

Moore, who was previously the UK’s ambassador to Turkey, joined MI6 shortly after leaving university and spent more than two decades in the agency before leaving for the Ankara role.

The FCDO, which oversees MI6, did not immediately comment.