They may not all lurk around bus shelters late at night in trench coat, fedora, and very dark glasses, asking passers-by for the time in thick Muscovy accents. They may do other legitimate things like host cocktail parties or chauffeur cars, but the "I-spy-with-my-little-eye" app scoping for interesting tit-bits never gets turned off. Funnily enough, just as with our own "diplomats".
Besides, everyone knows the best place to look for Russian spies is in British Secret Service-cum-diplomatic organisations. All we need do is give a couple of staff in the Brit's NZ embassy their marching orders and we'd pretty much be on the money.
Not so long ago it was a standing joke that to spy for the British Secret Service five main criteria were essential: you had to be male, have attended Cambridge University, be alcoholic, preferably homosexual (the better for blackmail), and work for the KGB.
This was exemplified in the quartet of fine upstanding patriots of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and (Sir) Anthony Blunt. Between them, for many a year they fed the KGB every major British secret going – often nonchalantly strolling home with top secret dossiers tucked under their arm.
The unfortunate Sergei Skripal – with his daughter, the subject of the Salisbury nerve agent incident – was himself a double agent working for the Brits.
Sprung by the Russians, he spent six years in a Russian jail where, had they seriously wanted him disappeared, ample opportunity existed. They then were happy for him to be repatriated to England way back in 2010. So why wait till now to try and bump him off? It just could be that other rogue elements are at work.
It's interesting how quickly – despite lack of firm evidence and judicial process – Theresa May declared the Russian government culprits and ordered diplomat expulsions, demanding support in kind from EU partners and other allies. Given her besieged own party, just maybe she's scrambling for a Falklands-type diversion.
But no surprise that EU nations are coyly playing along. They've long perceived the Brits as whingers with lingering delusions of empire, and are happy to see them out of the EU. The May government is haplessly committed to Brexit, so the EU nations want the Tories kept afloat until Brexit D-Day.
Fortuitously, we ourselves haven't as yet jumped through the expel-diplomats hoop on command, as we rightly declined involvement in the duplicitous Iraq War. But we can't claim any moral credit – it's only by default due to our woeful lack of Russian spies.
It's well known that Britain's best spy ever is James Bond, 007, but British Secret Service haven't yet twigged what Vladimir Putin gets up to during his frequent mysterious absences.
Even the loneliest Mongolian yak herder has noticed that Vlad's absences always precede the release of a new Bond film. For goodness sake, who apart from the British Secret service hasn't noticed the striking resemblance between Vladimir Putin and the pseudonymous "Daniel Craig", the present 007.
As Marlon Brando only needed a few dentist's cotton wads to become the Godfather, so too – plus some extra hair - for well-stacked Vlad to morph into Daniel Craig/Bond.
There we have it. True to the best of British tradition, their top spy is none other than the Russian President himself – the ultimate insider!
