FROM MICKY MURPHY, THE SPY, IN WARSAW

IT USED TO BE that the British Intelligence Community was happy enough just to manipulate and control the local press from a distance, recruiting journalists, planting stories, inserting agents. Not any more. Today, MI6, Britain’s much vaunted overseas intelligence agency, its Secret Intelligence Service, has begun publishing its own newspaper.

The London Spy will publish six days a week, and if circulation permits, a Sunday edition, Spies on Sunday, will join the stable towards the end of the year.

“We’re terribly excited,” said George X, a senior intelligence officer based at the SIS Headquarters Building in London. “We’re going for the tabloid format, with perhaps a young lady of doubtful virtue showing her main assets on page 3. Topless Moneypenny, you might say. We need traction, circulation, and credibility – well traction and circulation anyway – and that means hits on the website and subscriptions for the hard copy and the internet version. We have a budget but we’re going to try and make this pay. Who knows, if we’re really successful, you might see us taking over some big Fleet Street names. Though, really, do we have to?”

“For decades, MI6 and the home security service MI5, have been infiltrating the British press but that has now become counter-productive,” says intelligence expert John Bond-Jovyy, whose book Hands Up if You’re Spying for Britain And Write in English sat on the New York Times bestseller list for six months. “So pervasive was intelligence penetration of Fleet Street newspapers that spy-sponsored stories lost all credibility abroad. Everyone knew they were plants. So the chaps in head office came up with a new approach. They’d go the whole hog and publish their own newspaper – staffed by MI6 and written by MI6. The logic – if that’s what you call it – is that no one would believe that the British spooks would actually openly announce themselves and their agenda in print. A sort of double bluff. Plus they can really take the gloves off and write the most awful tripe. In a way, they might have something. There’s so much false crap out there now, who’s going to notice another fake news platform? Indeed, who’s going to care?”