Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Campaigning for the Queen's government

It's not the first time that US political operatives have campaigned in the UK. I have to wonder whose choices were more difficult, the candidates' or the consultants'?

Once Allies, Ex-Obama Aides Face Off in British Campaign

David Axelrod stood on a stage in the Buckingham Room of the Labour Party headquarters this month, rallying British progressives who are hoping, and paying, for Barack Obama’s message maven to help lead them back into power…

A week earlier, Jim Messina, Mr. Obama’s lanky 2012 campaign manager, met at Downing Street with his client, Prime Minister David Cameron of the Conservative Party, who argues that years of austerity have corrected the profligate years of Labour rule and that tough immigration laws are protecting British values and jobs…

Mr. Messina [said]… “Look, I feel very comfortable with my decision to go to work for David Cameron… ” He said he found Mr. Cameron’s support of same-sex marriage in the face of his party’s opposition “heroic,” and called him a “real leader” on health care and climate change.

“English politics is not analogous to U.S. in their political positions,” Mr. Messina argued, adding, “The conservatives are not Republicans in the United States.”

Mr. Messina’s defenders point out that Mr. Miliband’s politics are considerably further left than those of American Democrats and his Labour predecessor Tony Blair, for whom several Clinton strategists worked…

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