Obama’s lure still potent for UK politicians
By politics.co.uk staff
Labour is to discuss election strategies with Barack Obama’s staff – while the coalition government has just hired one of them.
Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy will travel to Washington DC to discuss campaign techniques with senior aides at the White House, according to reports.
The trip is aimed at helping revitalise Labour after their mixed performance in Scottish, Welsh and English elections earlier this month.
Meanwhile chancellor George Osborne has unveiled a former Obama administration official as the coalition’s latest open source policy making tsar.
He told the Google Zeitgeist conference that Beth Noveck, who had run Mr Obama’s open government initiative, was a “world class recruit” who would help “harness new technologies to make government more innovative and accountable”.
Ms Noveck “literally wrote the book” on how policymaking needs to change in the internet age, Mr Osborne said.
She is the latest recruit to a team which includes Tim Kelsey, Tom Steinberg and digital champion Martha Lane Fox.
