Energy Freeze Ed's New Obama Advisor Campaigned for Energy Price HIKES

Ed Miliband’s newest strategic advisor David Axelrod has previously campaigned for energy price hikes – a fact that will no doubt embarrass the Miliband team with his ‘freeze energy prices’ policy.

Axelrod – who was the head honcho in Barack Obama’s election campaign of 2008 – founded ASK Public Strategies, a consultancy which worked for a number of energy companies and politicians, one being the Illinois-based ‘ComEd’. 

ComEd argued in 2005, with the help of Axelrod and ASK Public Affairs, that an increase in energy prices was needed in order to keep the company, and indeed the industry, solvent. This is almost the exact same rationale behind UK energy price rises – though Ed Miliband and Labour have committed to a government-enforced price freeze if elected to a majority next year.

The Telegraph reports that Mr Miliband has said that energy price rises are “…bad for families, it’s bad for business and it’s bad for Britain too.”

But Bloomberg noted in 2008, in an article entitled, ‘The Secret Side of David Axelrod’: 

“One TV commercial, penned by ASK, warned of a ComEd bankruptcy and blackouts without a rate hike: ‘A few years ago, California politicians seized control of electric rates. They held rates down, but the true cost of energy kept rising. Soon the electric company went bust; the lights went out. Consumers had to pay for the mess. Now, some people in Illinois are playing the same game.’ 

The news will already have Tory campaign strategists thinking of how to best highlight the discrepancy to the wider public. Conservative Party officials are already widely distributing the information via their Facebook pages.

Labour’s relationship with Axelrod got off to a rocky start this morning as the socialist British political party misspelled the man’s name, calling him David Alexrod.