Scott Morrison praised by former MI6 chief for standing up to China

The former head of MI6 has praised Scott Morrison for ‘taking on China’ and demanding a coronavirus inquiry.

Former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove.

Scott Morrison has been praised by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of the British secret intelligence service MI6, for “taking on China’’ and demanding an investigation into the origins of coronavirus.

In a podcast Planet Normal published by The UK’s Telegraph, Sir Richard said Australia had led calls for an official inquiry by insisting on weapons inspector powers to look at the causes and spread of the coronavirus.

“I think it’s very courageous of the Australians to take China on,” said Sir Richard, who was known as “C” when he was Britain’s chief spy between 1999 and 2005. “I mean, there’s an obvious, huge imbalance in terms of power, both economic and military and political, but they are showing the way. You have to have a critical relationship with China.”

Sir Richard also highlighted a new coronavirus scientific paper by British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian virologist Birger Sorensen who have analysed the virus for a vaccine development and discovered “inserted sections placed on the SARS-CoV-2 Spike surface”.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: AAP

These inserted sections in the virus’ Rna sequence could not have happened naturally, say the authors. Prof Dalgleish is most famous for his research work with HIV Aids, but he started his medical career with the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Queensland.

Sir Richard said this new scientific paper would “shift the debate”’ about how the virus evolved and then developed into a pandemic.

He also called on the British government to “go into reverse” and not allow any critical infrastructure to fall into the hands of China.

“We have allowed China so much rope that we are now suffering the consequences, and it’s time to pull the rope in and to tighten the way we do business. It’s very, very important that we keep a keen eye on this and do not allow the Chinese to, as it were, benefit strategically from this situation that has been imposed on all of us,” he said in the podcast.

He said Huawei was already entangled in the British telecommunications systems, but that needed to be de-tangled even if it took years, because of the importance of 5G in national infrastructure.

Sir Richard said Britain’s Five Eyes intelligence partners, especially Australia and the United States were “pretty tough” in expressing their views (on Huawei) to the United Kingdom. He said it appeared Britain was now preparing to reset its views on Huawei “somewhere close to the Australian and American position”.

He said: “Fact is, if you understand the nature of the Chinese leadership, having China embedded in 5G is a security problem, a serious one.’’