Mr Corbyn’s director of strategy and communications described the “positive aspects” of life in the eastern bloc during a 2009 radio interview with George Galloway on talkSPORT. The spotlight was on Mr Milne in a Channel 4 Dispatches episode last night, along with Number 10 special adviser Dominic Cummings, as the two men were branded “the men who really run Britain”. The documentary suggested that these men are the ones truly shaping the upcoming general election.

However, Mr Milne has previously said some controversial things, including his praise of Soviet-style communism in countries like East Germany before reunification.

He claimed that many in these countries regret the fall of the Soviet Union and the “restoration of capitalism”.

He said: “If you look at opinion polls then – and even more now – most people in a good number of those countries regret the loss of those benefits and the positive aspects of that system.

“In eastern Germany most people today have a positive view of the former East Germany – the GDR – and regret it’s passing.

“Of course there’s some things they don’t regret – they like the fact that they can move freely around which they couldn’t before, that there’s more freedom of speech than there was then and, of course, few people mourn the passing of the Stasi, the security police in East Germany.

“But the huge social benefits that have been lost not only in eastern Germany but across Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union are mourned by the people of those countries.”

He was speaking to fellow left-winger Mr Galloway, who is a former Labour MP (1987 – 2003) but was expelled from the party and later ran as an MP for the Respect Party from 2004 to 2010 and 2012 to 2015.

Mr Milne, a journalist by trade, worked at The Guardian from 1984 until his appointment to Mr Corbyn’s team in 2015.

As a Eurosceptic, Mr Milne is often seen as a pro-Brexit force behind Mr Corbyn and Dispatches last night suggested he has deliberately sent out mixed messages about what Labour’s Brexit policy is.

Perhaps this is why only 15 percent of people think Labour have a clear Brexit policy, according to a ComRes survey published last month.

However, according to Peter Popham writing for The Independent in 1997, Mr Milne is “on the far left of the Labour Party”, a claim backed up by his comments about Soviet rule in eastern Europe.

In the 2009 radio interview, he claimed that “ordinary people” did not want the end of socialism, but those “in power” welcomed it out of self-interest.

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He said: “The fact was that there was a group of people in power who saw that they stood to benefit from the restoration of capitalism and many ordinary people who benefited in many ways from the form of socialism there didn’t really feel ownership of the system.

“And they didn’t necessarily see what was happening or what they could do to stop it.”

However, this was not the first time that Mr Milne had shown sympathy towards the Soviet regime.

After he graduated from Oxford University, he became the business manager of Straight Left, a monthly publication that began in 1979.

According to Standpoint magazine, Straight Left was produced by a pro-Soviet faction in the Communism Party of Great Britain and had several Labour MPs with pro-Soviet sympathies on its editorial board.

However, Mr Milne himself was not a Communist Party member.

When he was appointed by Mr Corbyn, the communications director attracted a fair amount of criticism.

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