WE THE WORKING CLASS!
The hard Left is now dominated by toffs. This week the granddaughter of a Baron – whose mother was a Dame and whose ex is descended from an Earl – urged her fellow Communists to take the unprecedented step of backing Corbyn with the immortal words . . .
streets away, which she bought for just under £ 900,000 with her current partner, a colleague at University College London.
Crucially, by transferring her old property over to the children, Ms Michie was potentially helping them avoid an inheritance tax bill of £500,000. Otherwise, had they inherited it upon her death, they would have stood to pay substantial death duties. But provided that their mother lives at least seven years after giving the property away, no bill will be due.
Though perfectly legal, such manoeuvres, finessed by other figures on the Left, have been politically controversial. For example, David Miliband inherited a £3million Georgian property in London’s Primrose Hill from his father, Marxist historian Ralph Miliband.
David and his brother, former Labour leader Ed, used a deed of variation to their father’s will that moved a share of the ownership of the family home into their names. Such deeds are often used to avoid inheritance tax.
And David Cameron was given £500,000 in gifts by his parents which would only become liable for tax were they to die within seven years.
According to Labour’s John McDonnell, this showed there was ‘something wrong with the system’ and Corbyn said it suggested there was ‘possibly’ a case for reviewing
Comrades: Andrew Murray with his new boss Jeremy Corbyn
inheritance tax laws. Quite how Ms Michie squared her family property transfer with Communism’s view of private wealth is not clear: she has never commented on the deal and didn’t respond to inquiries from the Mail this week.
She joined the British Communist Party in 1978, long before the end of the Cold War, after travelling to a student festival in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, where opposition activists were routinely imprisoned or tortured, and books, newspapers, radio stations and television networks were censored.
Despite the Communist dictator’s record of systematic human rights abuses, she once recalled: ‘I came back and thought: “Wow, if they can do this, I need to do my bit here to try and build a country along those lines”.’
After pursuing a career in academia, Professor Michie (as she is formally known) gained a reputation as one of Britain’s foremost public health experts.
For the past 16 years, she has worked at University College London, pursuing hard- Left politics in her free time.
Of course, for decades, universities have been one of the few workplaces where Communism has been regarded as socially acceptable. For example, Marxist historian Professor Eric Hobsbawm was revered at Birkbeck College, University of London. Notoriously, he said the ‘sacrifice of millions of lives’ would be worth it for a Communist utopia. Even so, Ms Michie seems reluctant to highlight her politics at work. She doesn’t mention her Communist Party role, either, when she writes letters to the Press, often criticising government policy. Nor does it appear in any of the official biographies published by her employers.
More strangely, mention of the Communist Party is absent from the 12,000 Twitter posts she has made over recent years.
She does, however, frequently endorse the Labour Party along with the university lecturers’ trade union, which is currently on strike over changes to pensions and which has several long-standing former Communists on its governing committee.
Only in the privacy of a room of fellow travellers under an image of Lenin, it seems, does the wealthy heiress who urges British Communists to help Corbyn become prime minister, feel comfortable uttering the phrase: ‘We, the working class’.