Labour taps veteran Australian strategist for election campaign

As featured on The Financial Times, written by Anna Gross, Jim Pickard and Nic Fildes.

A top adviser to Australia’s Labor party in its successful 2022 campaign has played a key role in crafting Sir Keir Starmer’s messaging in the UK general election, a sign of the ties between the two centre-left parties.

David Nelson had helped the UK Labour party develop videos, analyse data and draw up responses to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, according to people briefed on the matter.

He flew to Britain last month and had been working closely with Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s director of campaigns and an adviser to Starmer, and national campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden, the people said.

John McTernan, a former senior aide to Sir Tony Blair who went on to work for Australian premier Julia Gillard, described Nelson as one of the “key architects of the last Australian victory”.