Seumas Milne

Born in Dover, Milne is the younger son of Alasdair 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.

Milne was educated at Tormore School, a boys' independent preparatory school in Deal, Kent, followed by Winchester College, a public school in Hampshire.

Seumas Patrick Charles Milne (born 5 September 1958) is a British journalist and political aide.

In 1974, he stood in a mock election at Winchester as a Maoist Party candidate.

Following Winchester, Milne attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, politics and economics, and Birkbeck, 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 himself Shams (Arabic for "sun").

After graduating from Oxford University, Milne became the business manager of Straight Left, a monthly publication that began in 1979, which, according to Standpoint magazine, was produced by a pro-Soviet faction in the Communist Party of Great Britain, and included several left-wing Labour MPs with pro-Soviet bloc sympathies on its editorial board.

During his time at Straight Left Milne became friends with Andrew Murray, who much later again became a colleague of Milne in the Labour Party.

Milne himself was not a Communist Party member.

In the 1980s, he chaired the Hammersmith Constituency Labour Party when Clive Soley (now Lord Soley) was the constituency's MP.

Milne worked as a staff journalist at The Economist from 1981 but was not content working for a free-market newspaper, later describing it as "the Pravda of the neoliberal ascendancy."

Milne joined The Guardian in 1984.

Milne is the author of The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners, a book about the 1984–85 British miners' strike which focuses on the role of MI5 and Special Branch in the dispute.

In 1984, he joined The Guardian on the recommendation of Andrew Knight, The Economist's then editor.

In The 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."

Milne's early responsibilities for The Guardian included posts as news reporter, Labour Correspondent (by 1994), and Labour Editor.

In 1994, Milne's colleague Richard Gott resigned from The Guardian following an article in The Spectator that alleged Gott had connections to the KGB and was a Soviet agent 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 to MI5.

He was a columnist and associate editor there at the time of his Labour Party appointment, and according to Peter Popham writing for The Independent in 1997, was "on the far left of the Labour Party."

Milne was Comment Editor for six years from 2001 to 2007.

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.

Milne has reported for The Guardian from the Middle East, Latin America, Russia, Eastern Europe and South Asia, and has also written for Le Monde diplomatique and the London Review of Books.

His sister Kirsty Milne, who died in July 2013, was an academic who had previously been a journalist.

He was appointed as the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications in October 2015 under Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, initially on leave from The Guardian.

He is reported to have lobbied within The Guardian in 2015 for editor-in-chief Katharine Viner to succeed Alan Rusbridger in the post.

Milne served on the executive committee of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) for ten years, and is a former chairman of the joint Guardian–Observer NUJ chapter.

Milne told a 2015 May Day rally in Glasgow: "Resistance and the unity of the working class is what will progress our movement."

In October 2015, Kate Godfrey, who has worked as an aid worker in conflict zones such as Libya and Syria, described Milne as "an apologist for terror" in The 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."

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."

In August 2015, Milne endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.

On 20 October 2015, it was announced that Milne had been appointed to the team around Corbyn, elected party leader the previous month, as the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications.

Reportedly on a one-year contract, he was originally "on leave" from his post at The Guardian and assumed his new role on 26 October.

According to Peter Wilby in an April 2016 New Statesman profile of Milne, his most controversial decision among The Guardian staff was to print a 2004 article by Osama 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.

Milne's period in this role was described by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine as having turned The Guardian's comment section into a "truly global debating forum."

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan asserted that Milne's greatest achievement "was to take full advantage of the expansion of The Guardian's comment pages ... making them the most thought-provoking opinion section in Britain."

Hannan also praised him as "a sincere, eloquent and uncomplicated Marxist."

Following changes in staff responsibilities, he was succeeded as comment editor by Georgina Henry, with Toby Manhire as her deputy.

In January 2017, he left The Guardian in order to work for the party full-time.

He left the role upon Corbyn's departure as leader in April 2020.