Harris campaign brings in strategist from British Labour Party

Deborah Mattinson, a pollster and one of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's top advisers, is traveling to Washington, DC next week to brief the campaign on Labour's successful strategy in the last election. Politico reported. The move is one of the first major interactions between the Harris campaign and a foreign political organization.

Mattinson's strategy was to win back traditional Labour voters who had defected to the Tories under then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and to publicly campaign for a more centrist approach to the party's left-wing roots. The strategy she will develop towards Harris was developed with the help of the Progressive Policy Institute, which is run by Starmer's former political director, Claire Ainsley.

Mattinson's advice to Harris will be to “put aside the 'hope and change' stuff” and continue to focus on appealing to swing state voters, a person familiar with the matter said.

Although the Democrats are striving to repeat Labour's overwhelming success earlier this year, the 2024 UK and 2024 US elections are fundamentally different in some respects.

For one thing, Labour was faced with an extremely unpopular governing party and a Prime Minister with record low approval ratings. Voters further to the right were also able to vent their frustration by forming Nigel Farage's Reform UK party, which stole votes from the Tories.

While former President Donald Trump remains a polarizing figure, he boasts an enthusiastic electorate and a far more positive public perception than when he left office in January 2021. He boasts the loyalty of the right, and there are no parties further to the right that can steal votes from him.

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Despite all its advantages, Labour underperformed in the summer elections, winning a much smaller majority than expected. Although the party lost a record number of seats, the expected destruction of the Tories failed to materialise.

The Labour Party also suffered from a lack of enthusiasm – in contrast to the zeal that had brought former Prime Minister Tony Blair to office in 1997.