An American, an Australian and a South African walk into a British election

All three main parties have now hired foreign advisers to help run their general election campaigns. These foreign advisers have one thing in common: they’re all from the English speaking world.

Despite our membership of the European Union, when it comes to winning elections, all our political parties think there is more to learn from other English speaking countries than France or Italy. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any of them putting a European in charge of their campaign. But they are all delighted to have their American, Australian and South African campaign hands.

Partly, this is a language thing. But, I think, it also goes deeper than that. It is a recognition that there is to, some extent, a shared political culture across the English speaking world which is an argument for not putting all this country’s eggs in the European basket.