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President Obama's campaign mastermind suffered a humiliating end to his political career today as the British Labour party he was paid almost $500,000 to help to victory plunged to a catastrophic defeat. David Axelrod had been touted as the man to get Labour's Ed Miliband into - and the Conservative prime minister David Cameron out of - Downing Street. Instead he slunk out of Britain early, as his former Obama campaign colleague Jim Messina, who advised the winning Conservatives, crowed over a victory which had 'stunned the world'. Axelrod had already vowed that he was 'done with campaigns' after complaining...

The Conservatives have emerged as the dominant force in English politics after a string of surprising wins in key constituencies. Significant gains in the marginal "killing fields" helped the party to a comfortable majority. In a night of upheaval, seats previously considered Labour and Lib Dem strongholds turned blue as results trickled in. Several high-profile names including Ed Balls and Vince Cable lost their seats. Failure to win key marginals, combined with Labour losses in Scotland, prompted Ed Miliband to stand down. Meanwhile, Nick Clegg resigned as Liberal Democrat leader after his party suffered heavy losses and UKIP leader Nigel...

At 9:21 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday in America, former top Obama aide David Axelrod conceded the UK election. “Congratulations to my friend @Messina2012 on his role in the resounding Conservative victory in Britain,” Axelrod wrote on Twitter. The surprisingly decisive victory for Prime Minister David Cameron and his Tories also delivered a big win to Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, who advised the Conservative Party and triumphed over his fellow Obama aide, Axelrod, who advised the Labour Party.

David Axelrod: UK Media Most Partisan I Have Seen – Even More Than Fox News Ben Jacobs 7 May 2015 David Axelrod, the top aide to Barack Obama who travelled across the pond to advise Ed Miliband in the British election, has said he has never seen a media environment as partisan as the one in the UK. Asked in an interview with Politico Europe whether he knew what he was getting into when he signed up to advise the British Labour leader, Axelrod replied: “We discussed this when I signed on … I’ve worked in aggressive media environments before...

The Times and the Mirror are citing royal sources suggesting that the Queen could end up running the nation if there is no clear winner in the UK election. But does she have the power to fire or hire a prime minister?

The election results for the European Parliament will start coming in at 5pm Eastern Time (22:00 British Summer Time). Many voters all over Europe are making their choices today, in the UK the voting was on Thursday. Polling shows the United Kingdom Independence Party at about 30 percent popular support in spite of an intense campaign to discredit it by the major parties and the media. Everything from the race card to the employment of UKIP leader Nigel Farage's wife as his secretary has been thrown on the wall in hopes of something sticking. The immigration police just happened to...

Nigel Farage tonight claimed victory in the European elections, becoming the first 'insurgent party' to top a national vote. With results still being declared, Mr Farage broke cover to predict he will humiliate the Westminster parties, pushing Labour and the Tories into second and third. Support for Ukip has surged by more than 12 per cent, outstripping a more modest boost in votes for Labour, while the Lib Dems faced near-wipeout, with some calling for Nick Clegg to resign. Mr Farage said: 'Ukip is going to win this election and yes that will be an earthquake because never before in...

UKIP have topped the European polls in the UK, with the Labour Party vying with the Conservatives for second place. Sources from the other main parties have conceded Nigel Farage's party will win, with the leader hailing an "earthquake" in British politics. It will be the first time a party other than the Conservatives or Labour has topped a nationwide poll for the first time in 108 years.

DAVID CAMERON’S debut as Tory leader has given the Conservatives a surge of support that has put them ahead of Labour for the first time in 18 months, a Sunday Times poll shows. The YouGov poll of more than 2,000 people, carried out since Cameron was declared leader of the party on Tuesday, reveals that the Tories have turned a two-point deficit to a one-point lead. Cameron’s victory has pushed the Tories up to 37% of the vote, two points up on last month, while Labour is down one to 36%. The Liberal Democrats have also been squeezed, down two...

British police on Wednesday began a probe into possible electoral fraud in the parliamentary constituency won on May 5 by George Galloway, the MP who last month angrily defied a U.S committee over Iraq charges. "We have received a formal allegation of electoral fraud and are investigating," a spokeswoman for Scotland Yard said. Last month Galloway, 50, defiantly told a Senate committee that he rejected as "utterly preposterous" charges that he had profited from the Iraq oil-for-food program. Far from showing the usual deference of witnesses called by Congress, Galloway used the hearing as a platform to attack the U.S.-led...

In a mocking echo of the “Deck of Death” that the US military used to track down Saddam Hussein’s regime leftovers after the liberation of Iraq, a March 2004 cover of The Economist laid out four “ace cards”: Britain’s Tony Blair, Australia’s John Howard, America’s George W. Bush and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar. The freshly ousted Aznar had a red X emblazoned across his face. The stark, chilling headline asked, “One down, three to go?” At the time, it was perhaps a fair question. Recall that Spain had just been bombed and bullied into making a separate peace with terror....

To judge from the British media’s treatment of the General Election result, from 5th May (2005), one would have thought, unless one hesitated, that Tony Blair’s Labour Party had just suffered a defeat - such has been the slumber of British politics since his first election in 1997. Much stress, correctly, was placed on the return to credibility of the Conservative Party and the further progress (albeit frighteningly slow) of the centrist Liberal Democrats. Yet, net gains should not mask the simple truth that the past 8 years have been wasted for the Tories and that it is policies, in...

I have been following British politics since I started buying the London papers at the Harvard Square out-of-town newsstands in the run-up to the October 1964 British election -- and, on my first trip to London, queued up to sit in the gallery and watch the House of Commons and House of Lords debate British entry into the Common Market in October 1971. So perhaps I might be indulged in a making some reflections and observations on the British election just past. American political junkies love to watch question time in the House of Commons, with all its insulting questions...

I have been following British politics since I started buying the London papers at the Harvard Square out-of-town newsstands in the run-up to the October 1964 British election -- and, on my first trip to London, queued up to sit in the gallery and watch the House of Commons and House of Lords debate British entry into the Common Market in October 1971. So perhaps I might be indulged in a making some reflections and observations on the British election just past. American political junkies love to watch question time in the House of Commons, with all its insulting questions...

Labour's solid lead in opinion polls has prompted the media to dub the UK election race "boring" but in cyberspace it's anything but, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald. The campaign has sparked an explosion of web logs - "blogs" - ranging from candidates and journalists to voters sending up politicians and their media machines. It's open season. Britons fed up with dull political broadcasts and endless spin are heading to online weblogs to vent their frustrations. The main issues range from the economy and taxation to asylum, immigration and Iraq. Many bloggers cruelly satirise the party...

~~snip~~It is those voters, overwhelmingly Muslim, who should concern us at least as much as Mr. Galloway. Across the country, city after city with a large Muslim minority showed an above average swing against Mr. Blair and Labor. It seems pretty clear that the great majority of Britain's 2.5 million Muslims obeyed the instructions of their imams or community leaders and voted en bloc for whichever antiwar party seemed to have the best chance of defeating the Blair government. The Muslim defection from their traditional allegiance to Labor cost Mr. Blair up to half of the seats he lost and...

Labour MPs have engaged in a fierce war of words over Prime Minister Tony Blair's future in Downing Street. Some backbenchers ignored appeals from Cabinet ministers to rally around Mr Blair, issuing new calls for him to quit No 10 sooner rather than later, but one colleague, former welfare reform minister Frank Field, hit back - branding their behaviour "unforgivable" and "treacherous". Foreign Secretary Jack Straw became the latest Cabinet minister to come to the Prime Minister's aid, insisting that Mr Blair was a "genius" who had been the Labour Party's "salvation". Mr Blair's position has been called into question...

Tony Blair has been urged to quit as prime minister early into his third term, days after Labour's election win. Despite securing an historic third victory, the government's Commons majority was slashed from 161 to 67. Several Labour MPs have described Mr Blair as a "liability", among them ex-Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. However, senior party figures including David Blunkett and Peter Hain have rallied in support of Mr Blair, urging MPs to "get behind" their leader. Downing Street has said there is "no change" from Mr Blair's statement last year that he would serve a full third term. Some MPs...

Americans are accustomed to thinking of Britain as their most reliable ally, always there in a crisis. Broadly speaking that has been true since 1941 — and mutual. With the exception of a few wobbles like Suez and Edward Heath's refusal of landing rights to U.S. planes supplying arms to Israel in the Yom Kippur war, the Brits have shared a common approach with the U.S. on defense policy, intelligence cooperation, nuclear weapons, trade liberalization, and much else. Margaret Thatcher's backing for Reagan's Libyan raid and Tony Blair's commitment of British forces to the Iraq war strengthened this habitual cooperation....

Democrats Could Profit From Blair's Labor Prime Minister Shows Value in Hewing to Center By Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 8, 2005; Page A05 LONDON, May 7 -- Can the British Labor Party help the Democrats in the United States find their way back to power? **SNIP** Blair has been left weakened by Thursday's election, rebuked by voters for his alliance with President Bush as America's staunchest ally in the Iraq war. **SNIP** Politicians and the press here are focused on what went wrong for Blair. For Democrats, the significance of the election may lie as much...