Why are we making promotional videos about our advisers, asks Matt Forde

I feel so bad for saying this, but I can’t believe we put out a video announcing that David Axelrod is now advising the Labour party. Or, more to the point, I can’t believe that David Axelrod put out a video announcing that he is now advising the Labour party. Please tell me you haven’t seen it. Axelrod is a very clever man and apparently a great political brain but since when did we put out promotional videos about our advisers? I know that it feels like a big deal to those people working close to the leader but we’d be better off making videos to promote members of the shadow cabinet. Especially a year out from a general election. Will every adviser now make their own YouTube video? ‘Hi, I’m Olly and I’ve just joined the work and pensions team. I’m straight out of uni and I really believe in fairness and think that things are really unfair at the moment so would like to make things more fair to make sure there’s less unfairness.’

The video is straightforward stuff, Axelrod chatting earnestly to the camera. But look: his top button is undone and his sleeves are rolled up. Hang on a minute, that can only mean one thing. That he’s been working hard. No doubt for hard-working families. While pointing in the way that big politicians of the 1990s did and mediocre ones do now. You know, the twirly hand thing, with the thumb wrapped in the index finger. That gesture alone has alienated more people from politics than any speech. Single-handedly. It causes deep disappointment inside me, similar to the feeling you get when a girl you like turns out to be a massive Coldplay fan. ‘Oh no, what have you gone and done that for? You’ve ruined it all now.’

The fuss around Axelrod’s appointment reinforces the idea of a political class obsessed with itself. It’s great that talented people want to help Labour win the election but why make the video? It would have been a very different clip if I had made a video when I started working for the party. ‘Hi, I’m Matt Forde and I’ve just been seconded up here for the local elections because there aren’t enough staff. I have absolutely no experience of running a campaign of this size. For the next three months I’m going to be given the run-around by the local MEP and his henchmen who mistrust me more than they mistrust the Tories. I’ll be left on street corners with no idea where I am. I’ll print leaflets wrong and have to spend a bank holiday weekend bent over a risograph correcting my mistakes while crying deeply. Where’s the canteen?’ Don’t ask me why that example comes so easily to mind. It just does.

Axelrod brings huge experience from the Obama victories of 2008 and 2012 so he’s a god in many people’s eyes. Beware the magic of the golden campaign though. For a while in Labour ranks, anyone who had worked on the 1997 campaign had an aura about them. It didn’t matter what role they’d performed, because they were involved in ’97 we all assumed they were geniuses. ‘Me? Yeah, I worked on ’97. What did I do? Helped devise the literature strategy … Yeah, OK, I did the photocopying, yeah.’ Reminding people of your proximity to success can become a burden. I wonder how long it is before someone cracks and shouts: ‘I don’t care how Obama did it in 2008. This is Britain, we do things differently here. You strain the teabag and only then do you put the milk in.’ Whoever they are I hope they don’t point at the cup, that would be rude. Just indicate towards it with their index finger wrapped around their thumb.

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Matt Forde is a stand-up comedian and talkSPORT presenter. He used to work for the Labour party www.mattforde.com