Licence to trade: Liz Truss will use Ian Fleming’s old office to strike post-Brexit deals

When Ian Fleming inhabited an office in the Old Admiralty, he commanded a unit of specialist intelligence commandos. Now Liz Truss is poised to move into the same Westminster quarters to lead an elite team of trade negotiators.

The International Trade Secretary will later this month relocate to “Room 39”, the renowned base of the Naval Intelligence Division where the James Bond creator was stationed during the Second World War.

Codenamed 17F, he was the right-hand man of Rear Admiral John Godfrey who was later the inspiration for his character M, and was credited as the brains behind a series of daring proposals.

Behind the walls of the turreted, handsome red brick and Portland stone facade of the Old Admiralty, Lieutenant-commander Fleming helped devise Operation Mincemeat. The plan to hoodwink the Germans by furnishing a corpse in Spain with papers describing a fake Allied plan to invade Greece was a success.

Although operating in a markedly different context today, Ms Truss will nonetheless hope to mirror some of the attributes of the feted naval intelligence officer-turned-novelist, who was branded by one colleague a “skilled fixer and a vigorous showman”.

She may wish to stop short of matching his reputation as a salesman, however, despite her determination to boost British exports.

“Fleming is charming to be with, but would sell his own grandmother,” concluded his fellow spy Ewen Montagu.

Ahead of her move across Whitehall, James Bond-fan Ms Truss has joked to friends that while the famous fictional spy had a “licence to kill”, she boasts a “licence to trade”.

An ally said that she plans to capitalise on the literary heritage of her new digs: “We’re quite keen to do some sort of James Bond-themed export stunt at some point - it fits with Liz’s vision for using trade to project Global Britain and leveraging our soft cultural power.”

In the 1940s the office, which overlooks Horse Guards Parade and the garden of No 10 Downing Street, had a decidedly masculine atmosphere: packed with men and the thick fug of cigarette smoke.

From later this month it will take on a different aspect. Not only will its most senior inhabitant be a woman, but its walls will be plastered with pieces by female artists.

Ms Truss, who presides over the women and equalities brief as well as the trade portfolio, has chosen a series of works to hang in it from the Government art collection, which is also housed in the Old Admiralty.

A print named “Women at work” by Margaret Calvert, who was the original designer of roadmap signage in the 1960s, will hang in her office.

She has selected a series of other abstract and modern pieces, mainly by female artists, including Louise Giovanelli, Martine Poppe, Andrea Buttner and Melanie Manchot.

Alongside Ms Truss, 2,000 civil servants will be relocating to the building under a programme to consolidate Department for International Trade (DIT) staff, who are currently dispersed among four separate sites.

The overhaul coincides with the launch of new Government trade and investment hubs in Wales, Northern Ireland and Darlington, following the success of a pilot hub set up in Edinburgh last year.

Ms Truss has ambitions for DIT to “move out of the shadow of the Foreign Office”, where she and her political team are currently based, and for her department to gain “more of the prominence and profile it deserves post-Brexit”, according to her ally.

It should be one of the world’s top trade departments, on a par with the Office of the US Trade Representative, she believes.

The Government source close to her said: “The department has had a great 18 months, but it’s hindered by being split between multiple locations and not having a permanent home.

“The move to Old Admiralty will help bring the department closer together both operationally and geographically, and create a stronger sense of a single team.

“She sees it as an elite trade negotiation function, with strategic export and investment arms that play a key role in delivering domestic political priorities like levelling-up.”