After shunning them for decades over worries of blackmail, MI5 is now asking gay and lesbian people to consider a career as a spy, promising the chance to fight terrorists, protect their country — and earn a decent salary, plus benefits.

The domestic intelligence service is now not only going to start actively employing openly gay recruits, it is also hiring Stonewall (a group once associated with, and run by, former radicals such as Ms Mason) to advise the security services on how to encourage its spies to be more open about their sexuality and how to persuade more gay applicants to apply for jobs there.

But as dramatic as MI5's announcement seems, it is part of a much wider silent revolution that Stonewall has been pursuing for much of the past decade – persuading the corporate world to love gays. And in the past few years it finally seems to be working.