A former head of MI6 has condemned Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn and Jeremy Hunt as lacking the “standing” to be prime minister, sparking a furious row about officials passing comment on elected politicians.
Sir John Sawers declared that Britain was suffering a “political nervous breakdown”, with anxiety in Whitehall about the outcome of the Tory leadership contest and the prospect that Corbyn’s Labour might come to power.
Sawers, who ran the spy agency between 2009 and 2014, also took aim at David Cameron, declaring that it had been a “unwise” to call the EU referendum.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Sawers said: “We are going through a political nervous breakdown here in the UK. We have potential prime ministers being elected by the
