Can Britain’s Labour Party Teach Kamala Harris How to Win? – DNyuz

LONDON — They are both former prosecutors who made their names arresting criminals and tackling organised crime before entering politics.

Once in power, the similarities persisted, with both accused of moving to the left and trying to impose a woke, liberal agenda on a skeptical country.

Now they appear to have much to learn from each other, as they both fight to regain control of their own narratives from conservative opponents seeking to thwart them electorally.

At first glance, unexpected US presidential candidate Kamala Harris and newly elected British Prime Minister Keir Starmer seem to have little in common.

An understated technocrat, known more for his caution and quiet ruthlessness than his rhetorical skills, Harris is becoming known for his energetic campaign style that combines high politics and celebrity.

Less than a month after replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for U.S. president, Harris has cemented herself as a rising Gen Z icon, thanks to a flood of Charli XCX-inspired memes.

Starmer, on the other hand, is much less enthusiastic about the children, even having to deny that he was a ‘political robot’ during the election campaign.

But given Starmer’s overwhelming success in the July 4 UK election, when his Labour Party overwhelmingly defeated the right-of-centre Conservatives, Democrats, who face a neck-and-neck race to counter the threat of Donald Trump, are paying close attention.

Sister parties

Labor, the Democrats’ unofficial sister party, is happy to cooperate, not least to curry favor with politicians likely to serve in Harris’s White House in the future.

Several of Starmer’s closest and most trusted aides at Downing Street attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week to speak to members of the vice-president’s campaign team.

Among them were Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s election mastermind, and Matthew Doyle, Downing Street’s director of communications.

A host of Labour MPs, staff and strategists were also in attendance, speaking to Democratic Party staff to understand how they managed to secure one of the biggest victories in British election history.

The collaboration is part of a growing transatlantic network of center-left think tanks and political operatives that shapes policy and political messaging in Washington and London.

The topics under discussion included policy areas that pose challenges to both parties, such as immigration, housing and the challenge from the left on issues such as the Gaza crisis.

No more one-way traffic

Matthew McGregor, Labour’s former digital director who also worked as a campaign strategist for former US President Barack Obama, said Labour and Democrats’ collaboration had traditionally been “a one-way street”.

For the first time in nearly 25 years, McGregor said, Democrats now believe they can actually learn something from Labour, after Starmer’s party returned to a style of electoral winning not seen since British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton burst onto the world stage as allies of a progressive centre-left “third way.”

In the United States, there has been particular interest in Labour’s development since the party suffered a heavy defeat in 2019 under previous leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is far left of centre.

“Labour is one of the few Western parties that has recently won, or is likely to win, against the centre-left,” McGregor said.

“For Democrats who follow British politics, they are intrigued by the speed (with which) Labour has gone from the Corbyn days to the position of power now. It has really got people’s attention.”

A current Democratic Party strategist and former White House adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told POLITICO that “while the circumstances in the U.K. are different, there is a rough commonality and room for cross-pollination of ideas.”

Such as in the area of ​​border control.

Destroy the gangs

One of the biggest weaknesses Harris sees in the election against Trump is the issue of migration across America’s porous southern border.

When President Biden took office in 2021, he accused his Vice President Harris of attacking the root causes of Central American migration. Republicans now want to use this poisoned chalice against her.

Some Democrats are looking for ways to fend off the onslaught and are now turning to their colleagues across the Atlantic for advice.

Border security has always been one of Trump’s top issues, and it remains among the most pressing concerns for American voters, as it is for British voters.

Migration became a key issue during the UK election after a surge in small boat arrivals from France in the first half of 2024 under the Conservative government.

A Downing Street aide told POLITICO that Starmer “wanted to tackle the Tories where they felt their strength was.

“But it was also about showing that we knew this was an area of ​​genuine public concern and a serious policy issue, and not just a culture war issue.”

During the election campaign, then Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak did his best to portray Labour as soft on the border. But the attacks largely failed to materialise.

In response, the Labour leader repeatedly said he would “destroy” the gangs that run people-smuggling operations through beefed-up border security and better cooperation with foreign governments.

Starmer often added anecdotes to this message from his previous career as Director of Public Prosecutions in Britain and his experiences of bringing down terrorist cells operating in the UK.

Harris has struck much the same tone in her recent campaign ads, despite rival Trump’s claims that she was Biden’s “border czar” — a mislabeling — and bore the blame for the entire situation.

Like Starmer, she wants to slow down border crossings from Mexico by tackling cross-border smuggling operations led by organised crime gangs.

Her TV ads say that as a prosecutor in a border state, she busted drug cartels and locked up gang members for smuggling guns and drugs across the border.

“Fixing the border is hard. So is Kamala Harris.”

Build, baby, build

Jonathan Ashworth, director of the think tank Labour Together, was one of Labour’s key representatives in Chicago this week on behalf of the DNC.

The former MP, who was also a key strategist in Labour’s successful campaign, said Democratic staff were “interested in the way we put forward the arguments (on border security) because they intend to use the same arguments.

“We kept reminding people that he was a tough guy who put people behind bars and thwarted terrorist plots,” he told POLITICO.

“(Harris), like Keir, continues to tirelessly spread the message that she is a prosecutor who has put criminals behind bars.”

Mike Tapp, New Labour Dover and Deal MP, was also part of a delegation in Chicago this week organised by the Progressive Policy Institute to pass on “some of the learnings we’ve gained” from winning elections.

Tapp, whose coastal constituency has been at the forefront of the administration’s fight against small boats, said he has spoken with several Democratic strategists about how to convince voters of their border security plans.

“The message I want to send to our American friends is: Don’t ignore those concerns about border security and immigration. Address them,” he said.

“You attack those who exploit the desperate people and you go beyond the secure borders that are essential for a nation state.”

With Harris’ campaign only a few weeks underway, there is already another policy area that looks distinctly familiar to him.

Harris announced last week that the centerpiece of her new economic platform was a plan to cut red tape and speed the construction of millions of new homes.

That policy will be instantly recognisable by British political observers, as it was unveiled by Starmer in October 2023 and is now a key part of his government’s economic strategy.

Meeting of minds

Another area where Democratic and Labor strategists may be sharing ideas is how to address challenges to their parties from the left, particularly the Gaza protests that have ravaged major cities in both countries and disrupted university campuses.

According to Tom Baldwin’s biography of the prime minister, McSweeney convinced Starmer that he had to sacrifice his party’s unity to demoralise the far-left and show the public that Labour had changed.

The shift led to problems when Starmer tried to hold the party together over Labour’s response to the Gaza conflict, with his party’s left wing urging him to condemn Israel.

The Democratic Party has also tended to appease the left for the sake of unity, giving the faction power de facto leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to speak at the DNC, despite the risk of opening up attack lines for Trump and his Republicans.

Like Starmer, a pescatarian from affluent north London who was mocked by his Tory rivals for taking a knee during the Black Lives Matter protests, Harris is often portrayed by her rivals as too “woke,” a San Francisco liberal out of touch with middle-class America.

Republican figures have been quick to point to her previous warm words about the “defund the police” movement in America in 2020. However, Starmer has turned this perceived weakness into a strength by highlighting his work as Britain’s most senior prosecutor before entering parliament in 2015.

Harris is now trying to do exactly the same thing, using her experience as California’s attorney general to tell voters she will crack down on illegal immigration and the gangs that have fueled the explosion of U.S. border crossings since 2021.

The similarities between Labor and Democratic Party messages seem neither coincidental nor likely to disappear before the November US election.

The post Can Britain’s Labour Party Teach Kamala Harris to Win? appeared first on Politico.