Max Mosley, it may be remembered from previous commentary, is the man who organized a sado-masochist orgy with five call girls in some dungeon in London. One of these five, apparently known as “Mistress Abi,” tipped off a tabloid. The tabloid filmed, and duly published, what had taken place. Mosley and the five had been enacting a fantasy of being German officers and concentration camp inmates. “Mistress Abi,” wore a Luftwaffe uniform, and on film is shown to be shouting orders at Mosley.
Sadism plus pornography equals Nazism. How did Mosley come to be so sick? Almost certainly because his parents were the pre-eminent British Nazis of their day, and he had grown up in their shadow. The scandal now goes further, because it turns out that “Mistress Abi” is the wife of an MI5 officer, that is to say someone engaged in surveillance of al-Qaeda terrorists, and jihadis and spies in general. Jonathan Evans, director of MI5 and therefore intelligence chief, is said to be severely embarrassed. An internal MI5 investigation is trying to establish whether the officer knew about his wife’s prostitution, and was even involved in it. Meantime he has been fired.
This is a very British scandal, and it won’t soon fade away. People still rehearse the saga of Christine Keeler, a high-class hooker who years ago attracted a Soviet defence attaché and at the same time the British minister in charge of defence. And maybe a better precedent is the case of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, traitors and Soviet agents who also years ago ran away to Moscow, proving that the British establishment was rotten to the core, and that those supposed to be in charge hadn’t the faintest idea of what was really going on. Like Jonathan Evans and MI5 now.