Professor Susan Michie

Row Breaks Out After Richard Madeley Asks Susan Michie About Communist Beliefs

A row has broken out over a question Richard Madeley asked Professor Susan Michie on Good Morning Britain. After she’d questioned the wisdom of lifting the mask mandate on July 19th, he asked her whether her judgment might be influenced by her membership of the Communist Party, given the top-down, big state authoritarianism of Communist regimes, or whether her views were purely based on “the science”. An excellent question, but she rather testily refused to answer, saying she’d been invited on to the programme in her capacity as a professor of psychology and wasn’t there to talk about politics.

You can watch the exchange on YouTube from the 14m 29s moment, but here is a transcript:

Richard Madeley: There’s a point I really have to put to you and you’ll be aware of this because there’s been a lot of commentary about this in the British media about you and it’s to do with your politics and you know what I’m going to ask you. You’ve been a member of the Communist Party for about 40 years now, you’re still a member, and we know that they’re statist. We look at Communist countries around the world and we see that they are tremendously top down dominant and controlled societies that they rule over. I just wonder – and I’m putting this question on behalf of those who wonder about your politics – if your politics actually informs your sense of control? It’s not just the medical arguments, but you have a kind of a political bent to want the state to tell people what to do?

Susan Michie: I’ve come on your programme as a scientist, as do all people who come on to your programme as scientists. They come on to talk about the evidence, relevant theories, how we approach our scientific disciplines, and you don’t ask other scientists about politics so I’m very happy to speak about science which is what my job is and to limit it to that.

RM: So you’re saying that your politics doesn’t inform your opinion on this subject?

SM: I’m saying that I agreed to come on this programme as a scientist and I’m very happy to talk to you about the issues that you’re raising as a scientist which is the same for other scientists that you invite on to the programme.

Madeleley moved on at that point, letting Michie wriggle off the hook, but good on him for asking the question. He’s been one of the few journalists in the mainstream media to ask tough questions of Government ministers and advisors about their management of the coronavirus crisis.

Needless to say, not everyone saw it that way. According to the Independent, Twitter users strongly disapproved.

Viewers of the show were unimpressed by Madeley’s line of questioning, accusing the presenter of taking “cheap shots” at Michie.

“If you missed Richard Madeley’s McCarthyite questioning of Professor Susan Michie, around 7.25am, do try to find it on catch up TV. It may scare the hell out of you,” one viewer commented.

“I try not to use profanity on here, struggling now as I have just witnessed the most pompous pathetic & rude Richard Madeley talking to a medical expert & equate her science knowledge with her politics,” another wrote.

One Twitter user posted: “That ‘question’ from Richard Madeley was basically to challenge Susan Michie’s scientific credentials and accuse her of wanting to live in a dictatorship, she put him in his place, he is a dangerous man.”

But my Twitter feed told a different story. Michael Senger, a longstanding lockdown sceptic, tweeted: “Susan Michie expresses outrage when asked if her 40-year membership in the Community Party might inform her policies. Apparently, it’s ok to be a communist, but not to ask if this migth be connected to her open endorsement of communist China’s policies.”

Tracey Follows then came up with an amusing reply to Michael’s tweet: “Well that’s the first psychologist/behavioural scientist I’ve heard not wanting to promote the notion of (unconscious bias) on the media for a very long time.”

The row rumbled on, with another “scientific expert” and masking zealot – Deepti Gurdasani – claiming it was “misogynistic” of Madeley to ask Michie about her politics – eh? – and demanding GMB issue an apology as a condition of her ever appearing on the programme again.

I really don’t get why it was “misogynistic” of Madeley to ask Susan Michie whether her hard left politics have affected her position on mask mandates. Of course they have! After all, forcing people to wear masks as a condition of participating in certain activities is a flagrant breach of their liberty and the reason Michie doesn’t care about that and thinks public health concerns should take priority (even though there’s precious little evidence that masks reduce transmission of the virus) must in part be because she’s a communist, who famously don’t put much value on individual freedom. And the reason Madeley hasn’t put the same question to other members of SAGE is not because Miche’s a woman, but because she’s the only one who’s been a member of the Communist Party for the past 40 years.

By Toby Young  /  5 July 2021 • 22.25
     
171 comments

SAGE Member – and Communist – Susan Michie Says We Will Need Face Masks and Social Distancing “Forever”

Susan Michie, Professor of Health Psychology at UCL and a leading member of SAGE, says that mask-wearing and social distancing will need to stay in place “forever”, not only for Covid but also “to reduce other [diseases]”.

The top Government adviser and long-time member of the Communist Party of Britain (once nicknamed “Stalin’s nanny” because she tried to smuggle Communist literature into a political conference in a baby’s pram), told Channel 5 News that measures adopted by Brits over the past 14 months should now become a part of our “normal” routine behaviour, just as wearing car seat belts has become commonplace.

Vaccines are a really important part of pandemic control but it is only one part. [A] test, trace and isolate system, [as well as] border controls, are really essential. And the third thing is people’s behaviour. That is, the behaviour of social distancing, of… making sure there’s good ventilation [when you’re indoors], or if there’s not, wearing face masks, and [keeping up] hand and surface hygiene.

We will need to keep these going in the long term, and that will be good not only for Covid but also to reduce other [diseases] at a time when the NHS is [struggling]… I think forever, to some extent…

I think there’s lots of different behaviours that we have changed in our lives. We now routinely wear seatbelts – we didn’t use to. We now routinely pick up dog poo in the parks – we didn’t use to. When people see that there is a threat and there is something they can do to reduce that [to protect] themselves, their loved ones and their communities, what we have seen over this last year is that people do that.

This line – that “what we have seen over the last year is that people do that” – is faintly reminiscent of Professor Neil Ferguson’s comments when looking back to when Italy imposed a nationwide lockdown last February: “[China] is a communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with [lockdown] in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realised we could.” Professor Michie has realised that she – and the Government – can “get away with” telling people to continue abiding by Covid regulations.

Professor Michie continues:

I think that we can just begin to adopt routines. When we go out of the house, we check that we’ve got our phone, we’ve got our keys, we’ve got tissues, we’ve got a face mask in case we need to use it. It’s not going to be a huge big deal, the kind of behaviours that we are talking about.

Unsurprisingly, Channel 5 News made absolutely no effort to scrutinise these claims. The programme’s presenter raised no objection to the idea that mask-wearing and social distancing could continue “forever”, resorting only to friendly laughter. Professor Michie’s co-panellist, a fellow scientist at UCL, Dr Shikta Das, said: “I think Susan has made a very good point here,” adding that the vaccine roll-out has created a “false sense of security”. She concluded: “I don’t think we are yet ready to unlock.” How’s all that for balance! At last Ofcom won’t have any complaints about this programme.

The video is worth watching in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  10 June 2021 • 12.02
       
255 comments

TV’s Favourite SAGE member and Lockdown Cheerleader is a Hardline Communist Once Known as “Stalin’s Nanny”

Ian Gallagher and Peter Hitchens have written a couple of good pieces in today’s Mail on Sunday about Susan Michie, Professor of Health Psychology at UCL and a leading member of SAGE. She is one of the most zealous advocates of lockdown, believing restrictions should remain in place long after the U.K. population has been vaccinated. Most readers of Lockdown Sceptics will be aware that Prof Michie is a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but Gallagher has uncovered some interesting tidbits.

There are some things that Prof Michie – whose first husband was Andrew Murray, once a key adviser to former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – is rather less inclined to discuss, including money. Perhaps because she has so much of it. Indeed, she is the blue-blooded descendant of an earl who, along with her brother, sold a family heirloom – a Picasso painting called L’Enfant Au Pigeon – to Qatari royals for £50 million in 2013. This didn’t stop her once urging fellow Communists to support Jeremy Corbyn at a presentation with the words: “We, the working class…”

Peter Hitchens also has some interesting details:

The super-rich Communist Susan Michie is so militant that her fellow Marxists once searched her baby’s pram for subversive literature.

They lifted the tiny infant out of the way, to check that the future Professor of Psychology was not smuggling ultra-hardline propaganda into a crucial conference.

No wonder that fellow students at Oxford a few years before had called her “Stalin’s nanny”.

Why is this woman advising a Conservative Government?

Both pieces are worth reading in full.

By Toby Young  /  25 April 2021 • 12.16
     
51 comments