Garrick revelations strike nerve given MI6 chief’s diversity push

Sir Richard Moore wrote to all MI6 staff to argue that he would not resign from the men-only club, only for a day later to accept it was ‘embarrassing and untenable’. Photograph: FCO/PA

It is a very English crisis. In the past, MI6 has faced down accusations it was involved in cases of torture and rendition and only slowly admitted that sources who claimed that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the 2003 war were wrong.

But when it emerged in the Guardian this week that Sir Richard Moore, the current chief of the foreign intelligence agency, was a member of the men-only Garrick club, it prompted an almost immediate response. For an organisation focused on shaking off images of Oxbridge-stuffed shirt elitism, the revelation instantly touched a nerve.