Marxist Susan Michie returned to our screens once again this morning to lecture the public and government about the new Omicron variant. She has appeared on the BBC twice in three days, with presenters failing to mention that Michie is a Marxist campaigner both times. It is completely disingenuous for the BBC to repeatedly fail to mention this to viewers. 

It’s not just Guido criticising the corporation’s attitude here. In a Times article yesterday, senior Cambridge University clinical research associate Raghib Ali said:

“I think it would have been helpful to say to the viewers there may have been a conflict of interest. I also think scientists’ track record should be taken into account. For example Professor Michie’s organisation Independent Sage has repeatedly made inaccurate forecasts overestimating infections since July.”

Professor Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at Reading University, also said:

“I see nothing wrong with Professor Michie being given air time, but it should be in a more balanced way. But that’s not her responsibility to ensure, it’s the BBC’s.”

So far the only prime time presenter to call out Michie’s hardline beliefs for the transparency of viewers is Richard Madeley…

Expert activists and hyper-political scientists from Independent SAGE told us time and time again that the NHS would be over-run and cases would hit 100,000 per day if the UK opened up on July 19, Ferguson went as far as saying we could be at 200,000 cases by now. Professor “Pantsdown” himself, Neil Ferguson has now corrected himself and admitted he was wrong to be so certain, “hard-line-centrist” Christine Pagel has also admitted she was wrong – she had claimed she was backed by science and Boris was being ideological. No such mea culpa has been heard from politicians like Keir Starmer, or the political professors like the communist on the SAGE committee, Susan Michie. Broadcast media amplified their hysterical predictions which have now been shown to be false, will they take future predictions with a pinch of salt?

Good Morning Britain received 145 complaints over Richard Madeley’s interview with SAGE scientist (and card-carrying communist) Susan Michie, in which Madeley quite rightly challenged Michie over her radical politics and questioned whether they informed her views on Covid policy. A completely fair question, and a long time coming.

Ofcom are unlikely to rule against Madeley for asking a question Michie did not want to answer; that’s an editorial judgement way outside Ofcom’s remit. Yet apparently for 145 viewers, it was all too much. Of course, amongst those complaining was Michie herself, who took to Twitter to write:

“A complaint has been submitted and a public apology requested”.

If Michie and 144 other pearl-clutching viewers were upset by Madeley, Guido has to wonder what they thought of Matthew Syed’s comments on Politics Live yesterday…

On Politics Live earlier Matthew Syed succinctly made the point that Richard Madeley was inching towards yesterday – the issue of the card-carrying communist Susan Michie, of the self-appointed “Independent” SAGE, being given frequent media platforms to smuggle in her political agenda under the guise of “science”. Michie is a committed Marxist ideologue, and central committee member of the British Communist Party. This is relevant.

Marxist analysis understands socialism itself to be a scientific method for understanding and predicting social, economic and material phenomena to derive probable outcomes and probable future developments. Her life-long ideology feeds into her work as director of UCL’s Centre for Behaviour Change. That theoretical underpinning to her ideas on behavioural change and social compliance has gone unexplored even as she has been given a position advising the government in these matters. She has spoken approvingly of the Chinese Communist dictatorship’s authoritarian methods and of her belief that restrictions in Britain should continue “forever, to some extent.” Her whole mindset is one of top-down control and diktat that is incompatible with a free and open society.

Before anyone claims that Syed is a misogynist or a right-wing Murdoch lackey – he has a very readable intellectual column in the Sunday Times – Guido would remind them that he stood as the Labour candidate in the 2001 UK general election. At the very least it is fair to discount Michie’s advice in the light of her ideological activism.

Guido commends Richard Madeley for being the first TV host in the country to invite “Independent” SAGE’s Susan Michie on to their show and finally confront her about her hard-left politics. Madeley rightly points out that activist expert Michie’s love of national Covid restrictions may not be born from her concern for the nation’s health, rather the default policy position of a hard-core, state-loving communist. It looked like Susan didn’t appreciate this line of questioning…

Father of the House Sir Peter Bottomley gave the BBC both barrels this morning over their failure to accurately introduce Marxist Susan Michie earlier in the programme, who predictably lambasted Dominic Cummings. Appearing on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme, Bottomley said:

“If one of your previous contributors has been a member of a far left party for decades, donated more to the Labour Party under Corbyn than I’ve given to the Tory Party in forty years, was the wife of a former Labour Party special adviser and mother of Labour’s head of complaints, that might have been better than just saying she’s a member of SAGE.”

The BBC hit back by calling the information an “ad hominem attack”.

Guido had held out hope after Friday. There is more work to do…