Because of what they learned from Morning in America:
There is some anger at the betrayal of the Democratic-Labour axis. Stan Greenberg, the American political consultant who worked for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and now Ed Miliband, says: "It's strange simultaneously to work for an organisation working to advance Obama's agenda, and go work for a party that supports Tea Party austerity and closed doors to immigrants---the opposite of what you supported in the US election. I presumed that people get involved in politics because they believe in things, and they have a project."But Greenberg says Messina may be part of a different generation of political consultants: "In the '80s there was an ideological cross-fertilisation between the Clinton and Blair advisers. People like Philip Gould and James Carville---we had a common project on both sides of the Atlantic, trying to reform our parties and to modernise them. We shared the experience of the end of the cold war and working to bring democracy to new parties, and we were free traders believing in the opening up of markets in new countries. Most of the Clinton and Blair people were pro-trade, so it was all driven by big politics and economics."
In other words, it's all about the gravy. And if the corporate boys are ladling out bigger portions of it than the unions and the hippies are, you go with the corporate boys. Principles, after all, are for suckers.
---Baron V
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