Professor Susan Michie and her politics

It seems odd to publicly praise their “system” in a conversation about the pandemic, and then later act affronted when an interviewer questions the overlap between your political judgement and scientific advice.

As far as we know the Venn diagram overlap of SAGE, Independent SAGE, and Communist Party of Britain membership contains a single individual. The unique occupier of that locus is Professor Susan Michie, a psychology researcher at UCL. Michie is a highly regarded academic in her field with credible achievements to her name and is without doubt an interesting and distinguished individual.

Professor Michie’s expertise and seniority indicate that she has had considerable influence upon the behavioural advice that was channelled by SAGE’s sub-committees to the Government. Arguably she was the closest to the heart of power of any scientist with Zero-Covid sympathies, and was an advocate of permanent mask-wearing to “reduce other [diseases]”.

But despite her influence and indirect authority she can still be irritable when questioned. In July, as ‘Freedom Day’ was being resisted by numerous pro-lockdown scientists, Richard Madeley asked her on Good Morning Britain about her communist beliefs and she took offence. She claimed that there was no relevance to the line of questioning he posed regarding whether her politics informed her advice to the Government and whether she was acting as only a scientist when promoting her recommended policies.

However, in March 2020 she had tweeted during a discussion about the original Hubei province lockdown that:

“China has a socialist, collective system (whatever criticisms people may have) not an individualistic, consumer-oriented, profit-driven society badly damaged by 20 years of failed neoliberal economic policies. #LearntLessons”.

Michie’s cliché of China having a collective system is disputed. Whilst the governing Communist Party frequently engages in the rhetoric of coercive collectivism, research suggests that the Chinese people increasingly value an individualistic conception of life satisfaction. Factors such as marriage, income, freedom of choice and control, personal status, and health are becoming more important over time, whilst support for collectivist notions such as national pride are declining and the link between socialist policy and self-reported well-being has diminished.

At the time of Michie’s tweet there was widespread coverage of the Chinese state’s persecution of Uighur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Hong Kong protestors, so it seems odd to publicly praise their “system” in a conversation about the pandemic, and then later act affronted when an interviewer questions the overlap between your political judgement and scientific advice.

China had a poisonous influence upon the beginnings of the pandemic. The ruling party behaves in this way because they operate a shameless police state. And they operate a shameless police state because they seek to impose policies antithetical to human nature which requires it. Given that Professor Michie can invoke it as a model worthy of compliment, favourably referencing it as the “socialist, collective system” in contrast to the “badly-damaged” “individualistic” one, by which she meant Britain, it hardly seems unsporting to question the extent to which her radical politics are immersed with her views on a Covid response involving heavy state intervention.