Seumas Milne | |
|---|---|
| Executive Director of Strategy & Communications for theLabour Party | |
| In office 26 October 2015 – 4 April 2020 | |
| Leader | Jeremy Corbyn |
| Preceded by | Bob Roberts |
| Succeeded by | Ben Nunn |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Seumas Patrick Charles Milne (1958-09-05)5 September 1958 (age 66) Dover,Kent, England |
| Political party | Labour |
| Spouse | |
| Relations | Kirsty Milne (sister) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parent | Alasdair Milne (father) |
| Education | Winchester College, Hampshire |
| Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford Birkbeck, University of London |
| Occupation | Political aide, journalist and writer |
Seumas Patrick Charles Milne (born 5 September 1958)[1] is a British journalist and political aide. He was appointed as theLabour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications in October 2015 under Labour Party LeaderJeremy Corbyn, initially on leave fromThe Guardian.[2][3] In January 2017, he leftThe Guardian in order to work for the party full-time.[4] He left the role upon Corbyn's departure as leader in April 2020.[5]
Milne joinedThe Guardian in 1984.[6] He was a columnist and associate editor there at the time of his Labour Party appointment, and according toPeter Popham writing forThe Independent in 1997, was "on the far left of the Labour Party."[7][8][9] Milne is the author ofThe Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners, a book about the1984–1985 UK miners' strike which focuses on the role ofMI5 andSpecial Branch in the dispute.[10][11]
Born inDover, Milne is the younger son ofAlasdair Milne (1930–2013),Director-General of the BBC from 1982 to 1987, and his wife Sheila Kirsten,née Graucob, who was of Irish and Danish ancestry.[12][13][14]
Milne was educated at Tormore School, a boys'independentpreparatory school in Deal, Kent, followed byWinchester College,[1] apublic school inHampshire. In 1974, he stood in a mock election at Winchester as aMaoist Party candidate.[15]
Following Winchester, Milne attendedBalliol College, Oxford, where he readPhilosophy, politics and economics, andBirkbeck, University of London, where he read Economics. While at Balliol, Milne was so committed to the Palestinian cause that he spoke with a Palestinian accent and called himselfShams (Arabic for "sun").[16] His sisterKirsty Milne, who died in July 2013, was an academic who had previously been a journalist.[17]
After graduating from Oxford University, Milne became the business manager ofStraight Left, a monthly publication that began in 1979, which, according toStandpoint magazine, was produced by a pro-Soviet faction in theCommunist Party of Great Britain, and included several left-wing Labour MPs with pro-Soviet bloc sympathies on its editorial board.[18][19] During his time atStraight Left Milne became friends withAndrew Murray, who much later again became a colleague of Milne in theLabour Party.[20] Milne himself was not a Communist Party member.[18]
Milne worked as a staff journalist atThe Economist from 1981 but was not content working for a free-market newspaper, later describing it as "thePravda of the neoliberal ascendancy."[21] In 1984, he joinedThe Guardian on the recommendation ofAndrew Knight,The Economist's then editor.[6][22] Milne's early responsibilities forThe Guardian included posts as news reporter, Labour Correspondent (by 1994),[23] and Labour Editor. In 1994, Milne's colleagueRichard Gott resigned fromThe Guardian following an article inThe Spectator that alleged Gott had connections to theKGB and was a Sovietagent of influence—charges that Gott vociferously denied. Milne defended Gott against these allegations, which he thought "seemed absurd", and claimed the journalists who had written the expose of his friend were connected toMI5.[23][24]
Milne was Comment Editor for six years from 2001 to 2007.[19] According toPeter Wilby in an April 2016New Statesman profile of Milne, his most controversial decision amongThe Guardian staff was to print a 2004 article byOsama bin Laden, assembled from recordings of one of his speeches. While almost all thought it should have been published, a small majority thought it should not have been run as a comment piece, although the Readers' Editor later defended this decision.[14]
Milne's period in this role was described byNaomi Klein in her bookThe Shock Doctrine as having turnedThe Guardian's comment section into a "truly global debating forum."[25] Conservative MEPDaniel Hannan asserted that Milne's greatest achievement "was to take full advantage of the expansion ofThe Guardian's comment pages ... making them the most thought-provoking opinion section in Britain."[8] Hannan also praised him as "a sincere, eloquent and uncomplicated Marxist."[8] Following changes in staff responsibilities, he was succeeded as comment editor byGeorgina Henry,[26] withToby Manhire as her deputy.[27] Milne was moved to his role as associate editor in 2007, according to Peter Wilby because he was building up too many writers in his own image, and devoting too much space to Palestine.[14]
Milne has reported forThe Guardian from the Middle East, Latin America, Russia, Eastern Europe and South Asia,[28] and has also written forLe Monde diplomatique[29] and theLondon Review of Books.[30] He is reported to have lobbied withinThe Guardian in 2015 for editor-in-chiefKatharine Viner to succeedAlan Rusbridger in the post.[31]
Milne served on the executive committee of theNational Union of Journalists (NUJ) for ten years,[7][28] and is a former chairman of the jointGuardian–Observer NUJ chapter. In the 1980s, he chaired theHammersmithConstituency Labour Party whenClive Soley (now Lord Soley) was the constituency's MP.[32] Milne told a 2015May Day rally inGlasgow: "Resistance and the unity of the working class is what will progress our movement."[32]
In October 2015, Kate Godfrey, who has worked as an aid worker in conflict zones such as Libya and Syria,[33] described Milne as "an apologist for terror" inThe Daily Telegraph, adding: "I think that he never met a truth he didn't dismiss as an orthodoxy and that nowhere in his far-Left polemic are actual people represented."[34] The attacks on Milne struck James Kirkup in the same publication nearly a year later as being "a little silly, since part of the point of this columnising lark is to say things that get attention and provoke argument: by that measure, he was pretty good at the job."[35]
In August 2015, Milne endorsedJeremy Corbyn'scampaign in theLabour Party leadership election. InThe Guardian, he wrote "the claim that the other leadership candidates – steeped as they are in the triangulating 'pro-business' politics of the 1990s – can offer a winning electoral alternative to Corbyn's commitment to what are in fact mostly mainstream public views, looks increasingly implausible. ... But for now the Corbyn movement offers the chance of a break with a disastrous austerity regime – and for a real democratic opening."[36][37]
On 20 October 2015, it was announced that Milne had been appointed to the team aroundCorbyn, elected party leader the previous month, as the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications. Reportedly on a one-year contract,[38] he was originally "on leave" from his post atThe Guardian and assumed his new role on 26 October.[3][39] Milne's friendGeorge Galloway tweeted "Just what the doctor ordered" in response to the news.[40][41] In a soon-deleted tweet,Guardian columnistSuzanne Moore expressed her dislike of "public school leftists" in reference to the news of Milne's new role[23] and speculated that his appointment meant goodbye to Labour.[42]
According toTom Harris, a former Scottish Labour MP writing forThe Daily Telegraph, Corbyn could have chosen for the Comms post "someone whose skills in media management were better known than his personal political views. Instead he chose Seumas Milne, a hate figure for the right of the Labour Party and pretty much everyone else to the right of that."[43] Former Labour cabinet ministerLord Mandelson told theBBC that Corbyn had shown a lack of professionalism in appointing Milne, "whom I happen to know and like as it happens. But he's completely unsuited to such a job, he has little connection with mainstream politics or mainstream media in this country."[44][45]
John Jewell, an academic atCardiff School of Journalism, criticised the articles by Harris and others which mention Milne's response to themurder of Lee Rigby. Jewell observes that "the article in which Milne wrote of Rigby not being a victim of terrorism 'in the normal sense' began with these words: 'The videoed butchery of Fusilier Lee Rigby outside Woolwich barracks last May was a horrific act and his killers' murder conviction a foregone conclusion.'"[46]
In October 2015,Patrick Wintour, the political editor ofThe Guardian, wrote that Corbyn "has been struggling to ensure he receives an effective press since he became party leader, and Milne will be charged with ensuring there is an improvement."[2] In July 2016,Peter Preston, Milne's firstGuardian editor, commented about the ethical challenges faced by journalists-turned-political advisers shortly after Milne's appointment: "The 'on leave' tag appears to make Seumas a once and continuingGuardian man, which won't help relations with journalists from elsewhere."[22] According to Alex Spence, Milne has demonstrated a low opinion of much of the British press in his comments.[47] Milne leftThe Guardian's staff in January 2017, when it became known he was working permanently for Corbyn.[4]
In a July 2016Guardian column,Owen Jones defended Milne as "a deeply insightful and thoroughly decent man who has been wronged by his media portrayal as a soulless Stalinist apparatchik."[48]
In early October 2015, a few weeks before his appointment was announced, Milne was interviewed by theRussian government-fundedRT television network[49] while the Labour Party conference was in progress.[50] He said that Corbyn's initial front bench constituted a "stabilisation shadow cabinet" and was of the opinion that current Labour MPs were "not only far to the right of most Labour party members, but actually it's to the right of public opinion."[51] Milne commented that reselection in this parliament, necessitated by a reduction in the number of members of parliament due to planned constituency boundary changes, could be used for a "recalibration" of the parliamentary party.[50][51][52][53] In response to Milne's comments on RT, Corbyn's spokesman said in October 2015 that the Labour leader "has been crystal clear he does not support changes to Labour's rules to make it easier to deselect sitting Labour MPs."[51]
While the January 2016 reshuffle of Labour's frontbench was in progress, then-Labour MPIan Austin said that Milne's actions had been "an absolute disgrace" over the previous few weeks. According to Austin, "people in the leader's office, I'm told by journalists, Seumas Milne, telling us thatHilary Benn was going to be sacked, thatMichael Dugher was going to be sacked, a whole long list of people, not for questions of competence or loyalty but because they voted a different way on a free vote."[54][55]Isabel Hardman, assistant editor ofThe Spectator, cast doubt on this interpretation when speaking onThis Week, giving credence to a view that it was other people who claim to be close to Corbyn who were briefing journalists.[56] While Dugher was sacked by Corbyn from his post asShadow Culture Secretary, Benn survived asShadow Foreign Secretary.[57]
Milne made an official complaint to the BBC about the 6 January on-air announcement on theDaily Politics programme byStephen Doughty that he had resigned as a shadowForeign Office minister. In a letter toRobbie Gibb, the BBC's head of live political programmes, Milne objected to the BBC following a "particular political narrative." Gibb responded that the programme had merely observed the convention of the BBC, and other media outlets, in breaking news stories.[58] On 21 January 2016, Milne was reported by Andrew Grice ofThe Independent to be aligned with Shadow ChancellorJohn McDonnell in a power struggle between two factions in Corbyn's team.[59]
AFly on the wall documentary about the Corbyn-led Labour Party, produced byVice News, became available online at the beginning of June 2016. Milne was featured asserting that Corbyn's line of attack as Leader of the Opposition forPrime Minister's Questions was leaked to the Conservative government. In a recorded aside, Milne said that it happened "a third of the time", giving then-prime ministerDavid Cameron "an advantage."[60][61] Labour's General SecretaryIain McNicol emailed party staff to acknowledge that they might be "upset" by Milne's comments and to reassure them that their work was appreciated.[62]
Following the unexpected victory of the "Leave" campaign in the2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, Milne's role as Labour strategist came under scrutiny within the party. Internal emails passed toBBC News were alleged by Labour "Remainers" to show Milne minimizing party leader Corbyn's role in the Remain campaign.[63] Following more than sixty front-bench resignations, and a vote of no confidence with 80% of Labour MPs supporting the motion against Corbyn, Milne was accused by the Labour Party's former strategistJohn McTernan in theLondon Evening Standard of talking Corbyn out of resigning.[64] According toRobert Peston, other sources have disputed this claim.[65]
According to Peter Wilby, writing in theNew Statesman in March 2018, Milne as Corbyn's spin doctor[66] "has proved rather good at it. Most lobby journalists, initially hostile, now respect and even like him, finding his calm, courteous and expletive-free manner a refreshing change from many of his recent counterparts." Wilby writes that Milne is the closest of the leader's team to Corbyn, afterJohn McDonnell.[20] Milne was replaced in April 2020,[67] following the resignation of Corbyn and the election ofKeir Starmer asLeader of the Labour Party,[68] whichJohn Rentoul ofThe Independent saw as "the most significant evidence of the fall of Corbynism within the party."[69]
Milne has attacked what he calls "the creepinghistorical revisionism that tries to equate Nazism and communism."[70] In 2002, he wrote that the victims ofNazism "in the distorted prism of the new history ... are somehow lost from the equation. At the same time, the number of victims of Stalin's terror has been progressively inflated over recent years." He argues there is a tendency to "relativise the unique crimes of Nazism, bury those of colonialism and feed the idea that any attempt at radical social change will always lead to suffering, killing and failure."[71] He has written that crimes ofcommunist states "are now so well rehearsed that they are in danger of obliterating any understanding of its achievements, both of which have lessons for the future of progressive politics and the search for a social alternative to globalised capitalism."[72]
In a 2006Guardian article, Milne argued: "For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality. It encompassed genuine idealism and commitment ... Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the west, boosted the anticolonial movement and provided a powerful counterweight to western global domination."[73] In an October 2012 interview withThe Quietus, Milne commented: "Whatever people thought about the Soviet Union and its allies and what was going on in those countries, there was a sense throughout the twentieth century that there were alternatives – socialist political alternatives."[74] His statements were criticised byRachel Sylvester forThe Times.[75] In the same 2006Guardian article, Milne criticised theCouncil of Europe and others for adopting "as fact the wildest estimates of those 'killed by communist regimes.'"[73] He has argued that the "number of victims of Stalin's terror" remains "a focus of huge academic controversy",[71] adding that "the real records of repression now available from the Soviet archives are horrific enough (799,455 people were recorded as executed between 1921 and 1953 and the labour camp population reached 2.5 million at its peak) without engaging in an ideologically-fuelled inflation game."[73]
Milne contributed a foreword toStasi State or Socialist Paradise (2015), a book by John Green and Bruni de la Motte aboutEast Germany. In the Germany ofAngela Merkel, the denunciation of the former state has become a "loyalty test for modern Germans." Milne asserted that the former communist state delivered "social and women's equality well ahead of its times, and greater freedom in the workplace than most employees enjoy in today's Germany."[76] In 2009, Milne toldGeorge Galloway on the latter'sThe Mother of All Talk Shows, at that time broadcast onTalksport, that "East Berlin was absolutely at the front line of the cold war. That's what the Berlin Wall was. It was a front line between two social and military systems and two military alliances, and a very tense one at that. It wasn't just some kind of arbitrary division to hold people in, it was also a front line in a global conflict."[77]
Milne has been a vocal critic of thewar on terror,[78] thewars in Afghanistan,[79] and theIraq War.[80] In 2001, he argued that war in Afghanistan would fail to "stamp out anti-western terrorism", and if the United States invaded Iraq, "it risks a catastrophe."[81] In relation to Iraq, Milne argued in March 2008: "Given that the invasion of Iraq was regarded as illegal by the majority of the UN security council, its secretary general, and the overwhelming weight of international legal opinion, it must by the same token be seen as a war crime: what the Nuremberg tribunal deemed the 'supreme international crime' of aggression. If it weren't for the fact that there is not the remotest prospect of any mechanism to apply international law to powerful states, Bush and Blair would be in the dock atThe Hague."[80]
According to Milne in July 2004, "the anti-occupation guerrillas" were "a classic resistance movement with widespread support waging an increasingly successful guerrilla war against the occupying armies."[82][83] In October 2009, he argued for a "negotiated withdrawal" from Afghanistan based on a "political settlement, including the Taliban and regional powers."[79] In a speech at aStop the War Coalition rally on 4 October 2014, the day afterAlan Henning is thought to have been beheaded, Milne said that "the horrific killing of the hostage Alan Henning in revenge for the British decision to bomb Iraq is a reminder, if any were needed, that another war in Iraq or Syria won't stop terror."[84] He also said that "[t]he group that calls itself Islamic State is the ultimate blowback from the invasion of Iraq",[55] calling it "the Frankenstein product of the War on Terror."[84]
Milne argued following the7 July 2005 London bombings that it was "an insult to the dead" and a "piece of disinformation long peddled by champions of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan" to claim thatal-Qaeda and its followers were motivated by "a hatred of western freedoms and way of life" and "that their Islamist ideology aims at global domination", rather than "the withdrawal of US and other western forces from the Arab and Muslim world" and an end to support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and despotic regimes in the region.[85] Victor J. Seidler, a Professor of Social Theory from the University of London, argued in relation to Milne's article that we have to be careful "not to dismiss an Islamist rejection of the freedoms of Western urban cultures, in relation to consumerism and sexualities."[86] Seidler argued that, contrary to Milne's claims, they were at least partly motivated by "Islamist religious doctrine."[87]
Writing about Milne's articles on Muslim extremism,Andrew Anthony asserted that "whereas Milne can instantly detect the relationship between far right rhetoric and the recent murder of Ahmed Hassan, a Muslim teenager in Dewsbury, he dismisses the idea that such hatred as was captured in theDispatches programme "Undercover Mosque" [in 2007] might contribute to the kind of mentality that resulted in the carnage of the July 2005 bombs and the many terror plots that the authorities have successfully prevented."[88]
In the aftermath of theGaza War (27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009), also known as Operation Cast Lead, Milne cited allegations of Israeli war crimes in arguing thus: "With such powerful evidence of violations of the rules of war now emerging from the rubble of Gaza, the test must be this: is the developing system of international accountability for war crimes only going to apply to the west's enemies – or can the western powers and their closest allies also be brought to book?"[89] In a speech on 9 August 2014 at aPalestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration against the2014 Israel–Gaza conflict,[90][91] he said that "Israel has no right to defend itself from territories it illegally occupies. It only has an obligation to withdraw." He went on to say that "the Palestinians are an occupied people. They have theright to resist. They have the right to defend themselves from the occupier. It's not terrorism to fight back. The terrorism is the killing of citizens by Israel on an industrial scale that we have seen in the last month."[92][39][93]
Along with the journalistJohn Pilger and Andrew Murray, by now involved inStop the War Coalition. He attended theValdai Discussion Club conference inSochi, where he conducted a discussion in 2014 with Putin and former French prime ministerDominique de Villepin, opening a session there entitled "New Rules or No Rules in the Global Order",[94] and his expenses were paid for by the organisers of the event.[14]
On theannexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014, Milne wrote that "western aggression and lawless killing is on another scale entirely from anything Russia appears to have contemplated, let alone carried out – removing any credible basis for the US and its allies to rail against Russian transgressions",[95] and has described the annexation as "clearly defensive",[96] asserting that "the crisis in Ukraine is a product of the disastrousVersailles-style break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s."[95]Oliver Bullough, a journalist who formerly lived in Russia, disagreed with this view, asserting that "the destruction of the USSR was not some Versailles-style treaty imposed from outside. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus did it themselves."[97] Cross-checking with the leak of 4,000 Russian emails, believed to originate from Putin's senior adviserVladislav Surkov, the Conservative MPBob Seely, and the Ukrainian specialist Alya Shandra, have found that several of Milne's articles on theRusso-Ukrainian War appear to parallel the Kremlin's agenda at the time.[98] Bullough questioned Milne's view of Russia in general, explaining he had lived in Russia for six years, and had visited almost all the former Soviet bloc, adding that "when I read what Milne writes about it, I slip into a parallel universe."[97]
In October 2015,Brian Whitaker, former Middle East editor forThe Guardian, asserted that Milne "views international politics almost entirely through an anti-imperialist lens. That, in turn, leads to a sympathetic view of those dictatorial regimes which characterise themselves as anti-imperialist. It's the same with Islamist movements where they oppose western-backed regimes (Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia) though not necessarily in other cases such as Syria."[99]
In October 2016, while serving as Corbyn's press spokesman, Milne said in response to protests outside theRussian embassy in London that the "focus on Russian atrocities or Syrian army atrocities I think sometimes diverts attention from other atrocities that are taking place."[100]
Milne married Cristina Montanari, an Italian-born director of an advertising firm, in 1992. The couple have two now-adult children, a son and daughter, who were educated at selective grammar schools inKingston upon Thames.[31][42] In about 2013, Milne had a lung tumour removed.[31]
Certainly the channel is funded by the government, so it cannot help but reflect the Russian government's official position on the events in our country and in the rest of the world one way or another. But I'd like to underline again that we never intended this channel, RT, as any kind of apologetics for the Russian political line, whether domestic or foreign.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: location (link)(subscription required)Andrew Neil: Were Corbyn's people briefing that Benn was for the chop? Isabel Hardman: They have been insisting that they haven't been doing that, and it might have been other people who claim to be close to the leader, but it is not his media team personally.
