Miliband draws on Obama blueprint in UK general election campaign

When Ed Miliband replied "hell, yes" to a question about his fitness to be a world leader it gave an insight into his inner circle's obsession with the world of American politics 4,000 miles away.

Mr Miliband's crib sheet ahead of one of the televised election debates - left behind in a dressing room and subsequently published - reminded him to be a "Happy Warrior", a phrase from a Wordsworth poem used in a Roosevelt speech from 1924.

It is not a coincidence that he has been advised on how to handle the encounters by Michael Sheehan, an American debates expert.

The Labour leader, a fan of the Boston Red Sox, likes to quote passages from speeches by both Kennedy brothers. Some see echoes of Bobby Kennedy - overshadowed by his more charismatic older brother JFK - who sought to be a champion of the dispossessed.

Mr Miliband gave each of his aides a biography of Theodore Roosevelt at Christmas 2013 and once told an adviser: "Let Miliband be Miliband," a line reminiscent of the West Wing television series.

The fascination with Washington DC is shared by some political rivals such as George Osborne, the Tory chancellor, whose favourite book is the Robert Caro biography of Lyndon Johnson.

Mr Cameron has been advised ahead of the current election debates by a Washington-based US Democrat: Bill Knapp, who worked for Bill Clinton in 1996.

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Aides say the Labour leader is seeking to emulate the blueprint which brought Barack Obama back to power in 2012. Mr Obama lagged behind in the polls on economic competence after a long recession, but polled better on the "cost of living" issue.

David Axelrod, a former Obama aide who is advising Labour, is urging Mr Miliband to pursue the same path: although he admits that: "Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate."

Labour is also inspired by Bill de Blasio, who became New York mayor on a platform focused on living standards. There are also shades of the phrase Ronald Reagan used in 1980 to oust Mr Carter: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

The links go back two decades to 1992 when polling expert Philip Gould spent time in Mr Clinton's election "war room": not long afterwards his party changed its brand to "New Labour", aping Mr Clinton's "New Democrats."

It was Douglas Alexander, the party's election chief, who hired Mr Axelrod last summer. Mr Alexander is an aficionado of US politics: his office is lined with Obama campaign memorabilia and he was seconded to the Dukakis campaign as a young man.

"I don't know any foreigners who know American politics better than Douglas, he knows it like a native," says Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster.

<>The Axelrod appointment for more than £300,000 has been criticised by many Labour MPs as a vanity hire. He has been to London only three times since being hired and his detachment was exemplified by a tweet in which he misspelt the Labour leader's name.

"He is in constant contact, some of the people in Labour who slag him off don't know what's really going on," counters one Miliband aide. "He plays a crucial role in designing and honing and deepening our core message."

Mr Cameron likewise has Jim Messina, another former Obama aide, overseeing digital media strategy.

But there are limits to how far American campaigning models can transfer across the Atlantic: incoming advisers are often bemused by caps that limit British electioneering to a fraction of the $7bn spent in the 2012 US campaign.

They are also frustrated by bans on TV advertising, which means the message must go through a sometimes hostile media - which Mr Axelrod describes as a "very dirty filter".

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