In From The Cold

Lemsipped up to my eyeballs, I still managed to watch last night's post-Newsnight repeat of Spooks, since obviously nothing comes between a gentleman and his Downton Abbey.

In many ways, it is still as bonkers as ever, and this final series's central revelation about Sir Harry Pearce's past is thoroughly shark-jumping stuff. But doubtless, many people will continue to imagine that it is real, which is of course MI5's intention in making what, rather creepily, David Cameron has described as his favourite programme.

However, the days seem to be gone when MI5 wanted to depict the Russians preparing to set off a nuclear bomb in the centre of London. Now, Russia is correctly identified as the natural ally that Enoch Powell always said she was, when he was not accurately predicating that, when, why and how the Soviet Union would collapse anyway. The true threat is presented as coming from Islamist Chechen warlords. Quite so. What next? Some sort of apology for the earlier suggestion that pro-life Catholics were a terrorist menace?

First Baroness Manningham-Buller's Reith Lectures. And now this. They may not always pass the port the right way, but perhaps MI5 are not entirely bad underneath it all.