Axelrod – that’s what I call a reality check

“It will be me.”

That was Hillary Clinton, at the end of November 2007, expressing her confidence to CBS’s Katie Couric that the Democratic Party’s nomination for President was as good as hers. Hillary was the “inevitable” candidate for 2008. The race was going to be over very soon. Nobody stood a chance against her. And almost everyone agreed.

The fact that history turned out differently tells you at least two different things. First, that the Obama campaign (for the nomination and then the White House), co-directed by Labour’s new hire David Axelrod, was an extraordinary achievement. And second, that when a consensus or “conventional wisdom” has formed in media-political circles it is time to ask if, just possibly, the experts have got it wrong.

In Westminster the conventional wisdom has it that, in all probability, “it won’t be Ed”. But the danger of conventional wisdom was revealed again last Thursday night, when news of Axelrod’s appointment broke. A Newsnight discussion tried to show why this announcement a) really wasn’t such a big deal and b) just served to remind us what a loser Ed Miliband must be. The hiring was described at one point as a “last throw of the dice” – from a party that has been ahead in the polls for three years and remains ahead with a year to go to election day.

Nor did the fact that Axelrod was wholly in tune with Labour’s key campaign message – that people still face a severe challenge meeting the cost of living, and that this late, weak economic recovery is good news only for a minority – suggest to the experts that Labour’s case had been strengthened. On the contrary, the “cost of living crisis” attack was getting boring, repetitive, was losing impact and needed to be changed to prove that the party was not a “one trick pony”.

So many observers seem so deeply stuck in “Ed can’t win” mode that they are unable to change gears and see events clearly. Only by the weekend had the significance of the Axelrod hiring begun to sink in, for some. But that is one of the problems with conventional wisdom: it is hard to shake off. “The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking,” as the economist JK Galbraith said.

We have seen this sort of thing before. In the first few months of 1992 the conventional wisdom held that the Conservatives’ “tax bombshell/double whammy” campaign was – yes – boring, repetitive, and having little impact. “People aren’t listening,” the experts said. If the Tories wanted to defeat Neil Kinnock they would have to change the message and introduce some new themes. One thing was certain – if they stuck with the tax stuff the Tories would lose. Other previous conventional wisdoms have included Ted Heath not looking anything like a potential prime minister (1970) and Clem Attlee being far too modest and restrained next to the more effortlessly flamboyant Winston Churchill (1945).

It remains to be seen how much impact one (largely absentee) election strategist will have on the 2015 campaign. If economic recovery continues, and people begin to feel the benefits of it and believe that it will last, then Labour’s task will be much harder. The party still has much work to do in setting out a clear alternative. And the leader needs to make a stronger connection with the voters.

But the influence of Axelrod will be felt in campaign teams and in the campaign’s messages. He will deploy the skills that helped overturn the inevitability of Hillary Clinton in 2007/8. His hiring confirms that Labour are serious about winning next year. Axelrod seems pretty serious too. “The whole world is gonna be watching,” he observed with some relish in his video message to the party.

Call it a “game-changer” if you must. I see it as a “reality check” for those in Westminster who have sunk almost without trace into the comforting arms of conventional wisdom.