‘Social class’ check: Jeremy Corbyn’s top team

This summer, Jeremy Corbyn has struggled to get much coverage of his plans for domestic policy thanks to the fact Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis has dominated the headlines. So the Labour leader can take heart that one of his policy ideas has finally started to make waves. In a speech on the UK press on Thursday, Corbyn will call on the BBC to declare the ‘social class’ of all its presenters and journalists as part of a bid to improve its diversity – including whether they went to private school and their parent’s occupation and education.

Mr S has no doubt that Corbyn plans to lead by example and do the same with his office. But just in case he doesn’t, Steerpike has compiled a ‘social class’ check of Corbyn’s top team:

Jeremy Corbyn
The Labour leader grew up at Yew Tree Manor in Chetwynd Aston, a hamlet on the Shropshire/Staffordshire border – described by Tatler as ‘a pretty red Georgian property that was once part of the Duke of Sunderland’s estate’.

Upbringing: It was a ‘thoroughly upper-middle-class, scruffy country upbringing’, according to Rosa Prince, Corbyn’s biographer.

School: Corbyn attended the private Castle House prep school – then later a grammar

University: studied for a degree in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic.

Parents: His father was an electrical engineer and his mother studied science at London University in the Thirties.

Seumas Milne
Jeremy Corbyn’s director of communications attended the prestigious fee-paying boarding school Winchester College – where he stood in a mock election as a Maoist Party candidate

School: Private.

University: Milne read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford.

Parents: Father is former BBC Director General Alasdair Milne.

James Schneider
Jeremy Corbyn’s head of strategic communications also attended fee-paying Winchester College. He grew up in Primrose Hill, one of London’s most fashionable postcodes.

School: private

University: Trinity college, Oxford

Parents: Father was a financier and mother is a property consultant

Andrew Murray
Jeremy Corbyn’s close ally – part-time consultant – and top comrade attended Worth School, the independent boarding school.

School: private

University: did not attend.

Parents:  Father a stockbroker and mother a daughter of a Tory MP.

Perhaps Corbyn was onto something after all…