UK Conservatives' Election Campaign 'Not Particularly Good' – Expert

Labour Party campaign adviser David Axelrod said that the Conservative Party's campaign relied excessively on economic recovery and the unfavorable depiction of Labour leader Miliband in the media.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The UK Conservative Party's election campaign left something to be desired as Labour leader Ed Miliband overcame the unflattering image of him in the conservative British press, Labour Party campaign adviser said in an interview published online Wednesday.

Britons will go to the polls on Thursday to elect 650 lawmakers before the winning party or a coalition will form a new government to succeed the current cabinet headed by Conservative leader David Cameron.

"I think the Tory campaign has not been a particularly good one on the whole," David Axelrod, who is also a former campaign adviser to US President Barack Obama, was quoted as saying by the Politico Europe daily.

Axelrod explained that the Conservative Party's campaign relied excessively on economic recovery and the unfavorable depiction of Labour leader Miliband in the media.

"They felt that the recovery of the macro economy translated into a sense of progress and security in the lives of everyday people and that simply wasn't true. The second, they thought that caricature of Miliband would carry through the election," Axelrod said.

The Labour adviser added that it was "shrewd" of the Conservatives to avoid head-to-head debates with the Labour as the participation of other parties could have lured some voters away from the Labour camp.

Axelrod also said that British conservative print media is more powerful than Fox News, which traditionally support the Republican Party in the United States.

The Conservative and the Labour traditionally lead the pre-election polls with the two parties evenly poised at around 34 percent each a day ahead of the general election.