THE first thing to be said about MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli’s alarmist speech alleging an overarching Russian threat to Britain is that she should not have been allowed to give it.

An insistence that “the pressure we apply [on Russia] on Ukraine’s behalf will be sustained” should, right or wrong, be the province of elected and accountable politicians.

Britain is on a dangerous trajectory where it allows generals (who have an institutional, and in many cases a personal interest via arms company ties, in ratcheting up military spending) and spy chiefs (last year we had similar grandstanding from MI5 chief Ken McCallum) to make public political recommendations. Their words are given a veneer of objectivity by their allegedly non-partisan offices, but they are still state propagandists.

Metreweli is not alone in talking up the prospect of war with Russia. French army chief Fabien Mandon sparked an outcry last month, warning France to be “ready to lose its children” in such a war. Not simply because of his belligerence but because left parties pointed out it was not his place to interfere in politics. It undermines democracy and interventions like Metreweli’s should be unacceptable regardless of their content.

Secondly, we should question the top spook’s claim that the “export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement.”

Presumably this refers to dubious claims Russia had a part in damage to undersea cables in the Baltic and reports of drone activity disrupting European airports.

Perhaps also to allegations that Russia and Belarus have tried to “weaponise” irregular migration across the European Union’s borders, or even Lithuania’s weird claim that Belarus is waging “hybrid war” against it via the medium of cigarette smuggling.

It’s hypocritical from a power like Britain implicated in the creation of failed states — the “export of chaos,” if you will — in Iraq, Syria and Libya (the destruction of the latter also tied to the spread of jihadist terror across north-west Africa).

One might make the counter-claim that the US and EU-backed Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014, spearheaded by open neonazi forces, was an attempt to “export chaos” in Russia’s direction — something Metreweli should be alert to given her family history (her grandfather Constantine Dobrowolski was a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator nicknamed “the Butcher,” who boasted to his German handlers of his personal part in the murder of Ukrainian Jews).

But the pot calling the kettle black is common enough in international relations.

More significantly, we should ask why European leaders are talking up war with Russia — which has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal — even as the United States has decided that de-escalation is needed in eastern Europe.

The recent US national security strategy presents Europe’s fear of Russia as psychological rather than rational (a “lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia… many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat).”

But a stated US determination to “mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states” has prompted a hysterical escalation of war-footing rhetoric this side of the Atlantic, with Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte declaring we need to be ready for “the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured” — that is, comparable to the horrendous bloodshed of the first and second world wars.

European leaders have been humiliated by a US reassessment of priorities that downgrades their status in the Washington-led alliance, but to respond by moving further toward war with Russia — whether because they hope this will force the United States to reconsider or because they believe they can fight Russia unaided — is incredibly irresponsible.

Encouraging war fever across Europe raises the risk that misunderstandings or confrontations that go wrong could ignite a conflict costing millions of lives. All those who value peace need to stand up against this recklessness.