How Anthony Albanese helped Keir Starmer win his way to Downing Street
By Rob Harris
London: On the day that two of Boris Johnson’s most senior cabinet ministers resigned, sparking a mass walkout that would destroy his leadership and eventually the Conservative Party itself, Sir Keir Starmer was focused on events in Australia.
Health secretary Sajid Javid and then chancellor Rishi Sunak had dramatically quit their jobs on July 5, two years ago, saying they no longer had confidence in Johnson to lead the country.
Keir Starmer and Anthony Albanese chat during the Australian prime minister’s visit to London in May 2023.Credit: Instagram
But as the Tories descended into chaos, across town Labour’s shadow cabinet had assembled before a big screen preparing to listen to Australian Labor Party national secretary Paul Erickson, who had Zoomed in to detail how his party had won its election six weeks earlier.
Labour having lost four successive general elections to the Conservatives, who had the help of hard-nosed Australian campaigners such as Sir Lynton Crosby and his protege Isaac Levido, Anthony Albanese’s slaying of Scott Morrison had restored some hope to a deflated UK Labour that it could find its way back.
And while political gurus worldwide often look to the United States to live out a West Wing-style fantasy, The Spectator’s political editor, Katy Balls, says the country that really sets the tone in Westminster these days is Australia.
“It’s not just matters of security, like the AUKUS submarine deal, or trade that interest both parties here about our antipodean ally. It’s winning elections,” she wrote last year.
“They are seen to bring a required focus – and bluntness – to campaigning. From the ‘dead cat’ distraction strategy to running a focused ‘barnacles off the boat’ campaign, the tricks of the British trade are often made in Australia.”
Erickson’s presentation – telling UK Labour it must make the next election about the future, go hard on holding the Conservatives to account and focus on the economy – went down so well that he was invited to present to the party faithful in person three months later at its annual conference.
In a question-and-answer session in Liverpool with Shabana Mahmoud, who was appointed UK justice secretary at the weekend, Erickson gave an unvarnished explanation of what Labour must to do to win.
“The best form of defence is attack, and we dealt with the inevitable attacks from the Coalition by pointing out their own failings on the issues where they played desperate politics,” Erickson told the audience.
Anthony Albanese flanked by Starmer and Starmer’s deputy, Angela Rayner. Rear from left: Labour team members David Lammy, Nick Thomas-Symonds and John Healy.Credit: Instagram
“This was particularly the case on the economy. It’s no surprise that cost of living was the top election issue when Australians were facing rising interest rates, spiralling inflation and declining real wages.”
He told MPs, party members and campaigners that they must translate their frustration and anger at the Tories into a positive message that things can get better.
“After a wasted decade of conservatism, it was time for a change,” he said, urging them to adopt the same focus.
The advice began two years of close collaboration between the left-wing sister parties, with various figures flying halfway around the world to teach or learn from their comrades.
When Albanese travelled to London a year later for the coronation of King Charles, he hosted Starmer; Starmer’s deputy, Angela Rayner; John Healy (defence); David Lammy (foreign affairs); and Nick Thomas-Symonds (then spokesman for business and trade).
The meeting at Stoke Lodge, the official residence of Australia’s high commissioner to the UK, ran for more than two hours as the group peppered Albanese for advice and information, asking questions on campaigning scenarios and policy ranging from China to climate change.
They were told Albanese was able to forge empathy with voters as someone raised in public housing by a single mother. That encouraged Starmer, a naturally reserved barrister, to open up about his own modest upbringing. The pair have been in constant contact via WhatsApp since.
While a trip is not yet confirmed, Starmer is said to be keen to repay the favour with a visit to Australia in coming months, probably after the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa in October and ahead of Albanese’s re-election bid either late this year or early next.
Australian Labor campaigner David Nelson, pictured with daughter Sunday and partner Rachaell, played a key role in Keir Starmer’s victory strategy.Credit: Facebook
One Australian Labor figure who basically stayed behind in London was David Nelson, a right-hand man for Paul Erickson in 2022 and a veteran campaigner at state and federal levels.
Nelson, who founded the Brisbane lobbying firm Anacta with colleague Evan Moorhead, was at the centre of an integrity inquiry that forced Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to ban “dual-hatting”, where people who work on political campaigns can lobby governments after elections. Although there was no evidence that any rules were broken, the pair are unable to personally lobby state ministers until after the 2024 Queensland election, scheduled for October 26.
So Nelson, who was also hoping to expand the company’s footprint in Britain, began a role in Labour HQ to help craft Starmer’s messaging before the general election.
Having learnt his trade at Hawker Britton, a Labor-aligned government relations firm, he was a key part of the campaign, working closely with Starmer’s closest political aide, Morgan McSweeney, in Labour’s HQ in Southwark, a south London suburb.
The 40-year-old, who built his reputation in Australia analysing data and buying campaign advertising, helped the UK Labour Party develop videos, pore over research and polling in target seats and draw up responses to Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives.
His presence within the Labour campaign attracted the attention of political journalists at London’s The Times and the Financial Times, where he was dubbed “Labour’s Lynton Crosby”.
“I’d think of him as like a human dashboard for the short campaign,” one senior Labour figure told the FT, noting that Nelson decided what metrics officials should examine daily to gauge whether the party was moving in the right direction.
“He can be quite blunt ... he doesn’t have any time for time-wasting,” the person added.
Nelson was regarded by British Labour insiders to have injected an “obsession” with the cost of living into the party’s campaign messaging – in line with Erickson’s advice – and had underlined to staff how everything they said should make the issue “concrete and specific” to voters.
Starmer and his campaign team continued Labour’s long tradition of co-operating with like-minded centre-left parties, including Germany’s Social Democratic Party and the Democrats in the US, as he plotted a course back to power that had to negotiate climate change, the culture wars and the economic crisis. The international links with much more recent electoral success proved to be a valuable asset.
Last year, Bridget Phillipson, Starmer’s new education secretary, was dispatched to Canberra to help gather ideas to modernise Britain’s childcare system.
She told her Labor comrades in a speech in Canberra that Australia was “once again showing us the way ahead to the light on the hill, which still shines”.
“The challenges that you met, in winning back power, the discipline you showed, the focus you kept, the messaging you honed, in defeating a party unfit for office but still clinging on, are the challenges we now face,” she said at the time.
“And the challenges, to which you are rising in power, of making the social and economic infrastructure of our countries fit for our age, of sustaining in office the ambition nurtured through long years out of it, are the challenges we hope to face.”
New UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting visited health facilities in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney last year, meeting British doctors and nurses who had fled the UK system. He has promised to “turn the NHS on its head” by learning from Australia’s Medicare system.
The challenges for Labour are similar, not least because it will have to combat a growing apathy towards politics, a drastically falling share of the vote and extremes on both the left and the right that splinter the voting bases of mainstream parties.
Starmer, facing huge expectations at home, will now have to forge his own path, learning not only from the success of his comrades Down Under but also their mistakes.
But Britain’s 58th prime minister has left no doubt as to where he drew inspiration for a tilt at the top job. On a shelf in Labor’s national HQ in Canberra is a framed letter to Erickson.
“Showing us what you achieved for the Australian Labor Party has given us a real understanding of what we need to do, how we can beat them – and that we can win,” Starmer wrote.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.