Brits say former Labor Party leader was on Soviet payroll

Times:

MI6 believed that Michael Foot had been a paid informant of the Soviet Union and was prepared to warn the Queen of his “KGB history” when he stood to become prime minister, its officers have revealed in a new book.

The British intelligence apparatus concluded that the evidence presented by a Soviet defector about the Labour leader’s links with the KGB was strong enough to warrant the unprecedented constitutional action.

The book, The Spy and the Traitor, presents the first corroboration by MI6 officers of the allegations made by the Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky that Foot had received a series of clandestine payments from the KGB, which classed him as an “agent” and “confidential contact”.

They concluded that while Foot had not been a “spy or conscious agent” he had been used for disinformation purposes by the Soviet Union and received in return the equivalent of £37,000 in today’s money.
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This is closer to what real Russian collusion looks like.  The Brits have had several such spies in their midst, but this looks like the most high ranking one.   That the allegations against Foot were revealed by their own spy inside the Soviet Union shows a spy versus spy operation.