Jeremy Corbyn has sensationally appointed Seumas Milne as his new Director of Strategic Communications. Winchester College and Oxford-educated PPEist Milne, a former Stalinist, is renowned for his roll call of remarkable controversial quotes. Here is a reminder.

Milne wrote glowingly about the “armed resistance” in Iraq against US and British soldiers, and called Iraqis who worked with the US “quislings“. He wrote:

“it has become ever clearer that they are in fact a classic resistance movement with widespread support waging an increasingly successful guerrilla war against the occupying armies. Their tactics are overwhelmingly in line with those of resistance campaigns throughout modern history… The resistance war can of course be cruel, but the innocent deaths it has been responsible for pale next to the toll inflicted by the occupiers. Its political strength lies precisely in the fact that it has no programme except the expulsion of the occupying forces. Jack Straw said this week that the resistance was “opposed to a free Iraq” – but its campaign is in fact Iraq’s real war of liberation.”

Two days after 9/11, wrote: “They can’t see why they are hated… most Americans simply don’t get it…” and accused the US of “unabashed national egotism and arrogance“. He says “they themselves sowed” the seeds of 9/11 and blamed the attacks on “injustices and inequalities“.

A week after the 7/7 bombings, he wrote: “The only surprise was that the attacks were so long coming” and blamed “the bloodbath unleashed by Bush and Blair in Iraq”.

Wrote following the death of Lee Rigby: “Rigby was a British soldier who had taken part in multiple combat operations in Afghanistan. So the attack wasn’t terrorism in the normal sense”.

Kremlin-apologist Milne has said the West shouldn’t “demonise” Putin.

He fawned over Putin as he chaired a panel discussion with the Russian leader.

He despaired at the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Claimed that allegations Assad was about to use chemical weapons were “a breathtaking reprise of the falsehood that paved the way for the invasion of Iraq”.

Wrote glowingly about how Russia had “challenged” the West on Syria, and suggested Assad would not “intensify repression” thanks to Putin.

Downplayed the numbers of people imprisoned by Stalin.

Praised socialist tyrant Hugo Chavez.

When the spokesman needs a spokesman…