Seumas Milne

Seumas Milne    (spin doctor, journalist)
Born	1958
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Oxford University/Balliol College, Birkbeck, University of London
Parents	• Alasdair Milne • (father)
Party	Labour
Executive Director of Strategy and Communications In office 26 October 2015 - 4 April 2020 Employer Labour Party

Seumas Milne (born 1958) is a British journalist and political aide. In October 2015 he was appointed the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications, on leave from The Guardian.

Milne joined the newspaper in 1984. He was a columnist and associate editor at The Guardian at the time of his Labour Party appointment, and according to Peter Popham writing for The Independent in 1997, "is on the far left of the Labour Party". He is the author of The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners, a book about the 1984–5 British miners' strike which focuses on the role of MI5 and Special Branch in the dispute.

Milne's journalism and Labour Party appointment were the subject of much negative media comment in October 2015. Peter Preston, Milne's former editor at The Guardian, commented on the ethical challenges faced by journalists-turned-political advisers and concluded about Milne's change of career path:

"Houston, we have a challenge: let’s see if we have a problem."

On 4 April 2020, following the election of Sir Keir Starmer as Leader of the Labour Party, Seumas Milne was replaced as Labour's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications by Ben Nunn, a former lobbyist with private healthcare PR firm MHP Communications.

 

Documents by Seumas Milne

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:It's not Russia that's pushed Ukraine to the brink of war	article	30 April 2014	2014 Ukraine coup	A rare note of sanity (and accuracy) on the 2014 Ukraine coup from a western corporate media
Document:My Millbank	article	18 April 1996	Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn	Jeremy Corbyn's Strategy & Communications Director, Seumus Milne, gives a 20-year-old perspective to the current Labour Party leadership crisis
Document:Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq	Article	3 June 2015	Al-Qaeda Iraq Syria US Islamic State Al-Nusra Front Bherlin Gildo	American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against ISIS in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:HSBC and the sham of Guardian’s Scott Trust	Article	3 March 2015	Jonathan Cook	Britain, we are told, is privileged to have two “liberal” media outlets, the BBC and Guardian, that are seen either as neutral or as a leftwing counterbalance to the rightwing agenda of the rest of the media. Here are three illuminating articles and a short video that should help to dispel any such illusions.
Document:Labour costs pass £500,000 in hearing over leaked antisemitism report	Article	31 August 2023	Aletha Adu	"Much of the Labour Party machinery from 2015-18 was openly opposed to Jeremy Corbyn, and worked to directly undermine the elected leadership of the party...from winning elections to building a functioning complaints and disciplinary process" – Summary of leaked internal report (page 29).

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