Tagged with David Axelrod

Appointing Axelrod is part arms race, part morale boost, part psychological warfare

AxelrodLabourList’s Mark Ferguson concludes his piece on last week’s appointment of Obama spinner David Axelrod to Labour’s election team as a “big deal”. But is it, really? I hope it is. After all Axelrod doesn’t come cheap – an unstated six figure fee has done the rounds. Will his impact on the party carry more weight than say five or six extra full time Labour organisers working marginal constituencies?

I can’t help but feel sceptical about these big beast hires from overseas, regardless of who they work for. The Tories have imported Lynton Crosby from Australia to run vicious right-wing attacks – and yet they only appear to recover lost polling ground when they shut up and don’t say anything objectionable. They have also paid silly money for the Obama grassroots specialist Jim Messina. As I noted last summer, this is dumb when the Tory grassroots are suffering severe dieback. So what does Axelrod bring to my party that the collective wisdom this country’s labour movement could not provide? Continue reading →

Labour’s hiring of David Axelrod won’t work without solid, inspirational policies

AxelrodYou really can’t expect to win an election by importing an election guru from abroad – even one as well-proved as David Axelrod who helped win two presidential elections for Obama as his political adviser – unless there is a foundation of strong and resonant policies to inspire voters with in the first place.

At present there isn’t. The 2015 election is clearly going to hinge around austerity. Osborne is going to say that the 2.7% expected growth rate in 2014 shows that he was right all along and that austerity has worked. In fact austerity hasn’t worked at all except to depress the economy. Continue reading →