Why Britons still haven’t learnt from Obama’s campaign

While Barack Obama has moved on to a serious if difficult effort to cope with the economic crisis and some real movement towards the investment in infrastructure, health care and energy independence he promised during the campaign, it feels like the British debate has scarcely moved past this nonsensical “who is the British Barack Obama” argument.

The launch of the (excellent) Fabian Society book, The Change We Need, recently brought this navel gazing to a new peak.

In recent months I’ve been meeting with a lot of British candidates and political organisers who seem to believe that if only they could copy one easy thing from Obama’s efforts, all would be well. But they also need to be careful not to learn the wrong lessons from this success.

Here are the top five things I think British left of centre politics still gets wrong:
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