Getty The Axelrod exit interview Obama’s political mastermind, now working for Ed Miliband, finds UK conservative media more powerful than Fox News.

American campaigning techniques — and American political operatives — have long been a part of the British political scene. The first opinion polling operation in the UK, MORI, was set up by American Robert Worcester back in the 1960’s.

Still it stirred up quite a bit of interest locally when Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s campaign manager in 2012, was hired by Britain’s Conservative Party in 2013 to help David Cameron and company win the general election. The excitement level rose in 2014 when David Axelrod, chief campaign adviser to Obama, signed on— for a reported £300,000 (€409,000 or $454,000) — to advise Ed Miliband and the Labour Party.

Both men have been surprisingly absent from the press in recent months. Surprising because in the US they would have been spinning furiously and in public to get their message across.

The political game is played slightly differently in the UK.

Messina has been unusually quiet about his work since last autumn when he was quoted in the Daily Mail saying, "I’ve never lost an election and, believe me, I’m not starting with Ed Miliband.”

Reached by POLITICO he declined to be interviewed saying, “I’m not the story.”

Axelrod was not quite as reticent, perhaps because his work is coming to an end. POLITICO caught up with him at his not-particularly-grand hotel behind Waterloo station to conduct an exit interview just before he headed to Heathrow and a flight home to Chicago

POLITICO: How did you get involved with Ed Miliband?

DA: I had no intention of getting involved here. I’m done with American campaigns. Done with campaigns anywhere. But a mutual friend put me in touch by telephone with Ed Miliband.

We got into conversations about the challenge facing all mature economies — ours and this one especially. That is, how in the 21st century — given the march of technology and globalization — how do countries still honor the value of work, give the best chance to people who work hard to get ahead. Public policy can either add or detract to that effort. He seemed interested in that.

POLITICO: So what was your job?

DA: Consulting on the phone, mainly consulting on message. I’ve been here half a dozen times.

POLITICO: They speak a different language in the UK. The words may be the same but the meanings are not quite what you think. Was it hard to get up to speed on their political process?

DA: A lot of what is driving British politics today is similar to what is driving American politics.

POLITICO: What are the biggest differences?

DA: First is money. It’s huge. I was a media consultant for 25 years and while I did all the things I’m doing here I also produced advertising. That’s a huge difference between American politics and British politics. Ads help define campaigns in America and they’re absent here — which may be better for the commonweal but it’s one less really powerful tool in the tool box.

Second difference is length of campaign, which is quite short. So you have a short time to communicate your message.

As a result there is a disproportionate power in the media and a much more aggressive media that you have to navigate.

Finally, there is the Parliamentary system.

POLITICO: Could you be a bit more specific?

DA: Money. The Tories will have significantly more resources in this election but it won’t be as decisive as it would be in the states.

POLITICO: But what about the press? You say it has disproportionate power here. Do you think Britain’s conservative print media is more powerful than Fox News?

DA: Yeah, I do. I do think the parties approach media as partisan players. So you see parties disseminating messages through the print media in a way that is unusual.

(POLITICO note: Parties get around the restrictions on advertising on TV by launching a new poster every week or so. TV crews come out, film a party bigwig giving a speech in front of the poster and the result is a cheap, cheerful ad in the guise of news reporting and since it’s the norm, it is a highly effective way to get your message disseminated.)

DA: Fox is certainly very conservative, skews to the Republican side, but there isn’t a kind of lockstep between them and the Republicans. Fox tries to drive the Republican agenda more than reflecting it.

Here there are relationships between the parties and media outlets that are deeper so you see a lot of themes being previewed in the media in a way that you don’t see in the states.

POLITICO: Did you know what you were getting into?

DA: We discussed this when I signed on … I’ve worked in aggressive media environments before but not this partisan.

POLITICO: So if you can’t buy ad time to get around the partisan filter, what do you do?

DA: I think you need to tolerate that noise. In certain ways it’s worked to Miliband’s advantage. When he emerged in the campaign and performed well, he completely surpassed the expectations that were set for him. He wasn’t the cartoon that the conservative media had depicted him as. He took four years of beatings from the conservative media that lowered the bar which he then cleared smartly. That’s the silver lining of working in a very noisy media environment. You’re not going to change it, you have to navigate it.

Then you have to take the opportunity to talk to the country like in these debate “situations.”

POLITICO: “Situations” is a good way to describe the debates that happened in this campaign. The Conservatives avoided a head to head debate with Miliband. Were they right to do that?

DA: I think the Tory campaign has not been a particularly good one on the whole. They put too much truck in two things.

One: 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. he second, they thought that caricature of Miliband would carry through the election.

POLITICO: Did they do anything right?

DA: The one thing they did that was particularly shrewd was they insisted that all the parties participate in the debate. They didn’t do that out of a sense of equity and fairness. They did it because they wanted to give the Scottish National Party a platform and the result is the situation you see today.

(POLITICO note: The SNP’s leader, Nicola Sturgeon became a star based on her performance at the debate and her party is poised to win almost every one of Scotland’s 59 Parliamentary seats. Most of those seats are currently held by Labour. Their expected loss means Labour has no chance of winning a majority.)

POLITICO: But what about the guys working on the other sideline? Your old pal, Jim Messina and the man in overall charge of the Conservative campaign, Australian political operative Lynton Crosby.

DA: Personalities aren’t that important. My operant theory about politics is you’re never as smart as you look when you’re winning and you’re never as dumb as you look when you’re losing.

Their greatest challenge has been hubris … and the fact that there really is a recovery that hasn’t reached the kitchen table.

POLITICO: Finally, we’re heading for a hung Parliament and what is likely to be a bruising fight outside the voting booth for who forms the next government. There are echoes of Bush v Gore in this. Do you think Miliband, like Gore, will fold his hand when pressed by the Conservatives?

DA: The one thing that people consistently have done is underestimate Miliband’s mettle. You learn about people in a campaign.

Anyone who underestimates Ed Miliband does so at their own peril.