LONDON — Deborah Mattinson, one of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s top advisers, will brief Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign on Labour’s election-winning strategy, Politico has learned.
In a sign of deepening ties between the two teams, Mattinson will travel to Washington DC next week where he will meet with Harris-Walz campaign strategists and share insight on the centre-left starmer’s crucial path to victory in July’s UK election.
The polling veteran served as the then opposition leader’s strategy director for three years leading up to the election, during which time she emphasized the importance of winning back traditional Labor voters who had swung to the Tories under Boris Johnson.
Mattison’s advice to the vice-president’s team was developed with the DC-based Progressive Policy Institute think tank, run by Starmer’s former policy director Claire Ainslie.
A former colleague who worked with Mattinson on Labor’s campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity, said she wanted to “put aside the hope and change stuff” and maintain a ruthless focus on Harris’ appeal in swing states.
Of the seven states identified by the Harris and Trump campaigns as key Electoral College battlegrounds, Harris leads Trump in three of them but only narrowly.
Mattinson is A fixture of the UK polling sceneKnown for her work with focus groups under former Labor ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Her move came after several of Starmer’s closest aides traveled to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention and met with members of the vice president’s campaign team.
Labour’s chief election strategist Morgan McSweeney and Downing Street communications director Matthew Doyle made the trip with a select group of loyal new MPs.
Common challenges
The collaboration is just one strand in a growing transatlantic network of center-left think tanks and political operatives that shape policy and political communication in Washington and London.
Common challenges on both sides of the Atlantic include pressure from the left on issues such as immigration, housing and the Gaza crisis.
Matthew McGregor, a former Labor digital director who also worked as a campaign strategist for former US president Barack Obama, told POLITICO last month Collaboration between Labor and the Democrats has traditionally been “one-way traffic” – but that is changing.
For the first time in nearly 25 years, McGregor said, Democrats believe they have something to learn from Labour, after Starmer’s party returned to winning ways when UK PM Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton spoke to the progressive centre. – Abandoned the “Third Way”.
Stateside interest in Labour’s trip has been particularly strong in 2019 since it suffered a heavy defeat under previous leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is far left of centre.
Labor is one of the only western parties that has recently won, or is likely to win, from the center left, McGregor said.
“For Democrats following British politics, they were quickly interested [with] Labor which has been in power since the Corbyn days. It really gets people’s attention.”
Jonathan Ashworth, director of the Labor Together think tank, was one of Labor’s senior figures in Chicago last month for the DNC, and served as a key strategist in the party’s successful summer campaign to oust the Tories after 14 years in power.
He said Democratic operatives were “interested in how we argued [on border security]Because they want to make the same arguments.
“We kept reminding people that he was a tough guy who put people behind bars and foiled terrorist plots,” Ashworth said of Starmer, who — like Harris — is a former prosecutor.
“[Harris]Like Kiir, relentlessly pushing the message that she is a prosecutor who puts criminals behind bars.
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