White British students not allowed to apply for security services internship

As much as I dislike the source in this case, looking into the story does show that it's accurate.

https://www.mi5.gov.uk/careers/opportunities/internships

Although I understand that this is well-intentioned, or at least likely to be an attempt to comply with diversity guidelines, at best it's a case of terrifically poor optics, and at worse it's outright racism.

Maybe the devil is in the details here, but it seems rather obvious why intelligence organizations would want to recruit from diverse backgrounds.

So are they barred from working at these places, or are they just not eligible to get there by means of programs that seek to increase diversity of hires and they have to get there the normal way instead?

"We’re confining the applications for this Internship to those within this demographic due to a current underrepresentation in our workforce. Not sure if that’s you? Scroll down to the bottom of this section for a full breakdown of the eligibility criteria."

It might be diversity hiring, or it might be that somebody at Vauxhall finally twigged to the fact that front-loading your intelligence agency with upper class Harrow school boys might not be the smartest move if you actually want to understand anything other than covert alcoholism and how to play grabass with the intern girls.