DA chief strategist headhunted for top UK job

THE DA will be without its chief strategist when campaigning gets under way for the 2014 elections – but Ryan Coetzee, who’s been headhunted to work for British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, says the party won’t suffer.

“The DA’s strategy is set,” Coetzee, who expects to leave SA in the next two weeks, once his work visa comes through, told The Star yesterday.

“We plan way in advance. There’s a clear idea of what the DA is going to do and who is going to be doing what. So the DA isn’t going to be compro- mised – and I will also not be all that far away.”

Coetzee’s departure, it is understood, has left party leader Helen Zille “not overjoyed”, and its announcement took staff by surprise.

Coetzee said talks with Clegg’s office got under way in earnest in July when he first confided the news of his potential departure to Zille and two other party heavyweights.

But the news could be celebrated in Luthuli House, as Coetzee was largely behind the electoral gains made by the DA.

The initial approach came from the Liberal Democrats leader’s Oates.

Polls have shown Clegg’s party to have suffered a significant decline in support since the party agreed to form a ruling coalition with David Cameron’s Conservative Party.

It is this decline that Coetzee will have to address. As Clegg’s director of strategy, he will have to help the Liberal Democrats “navigate its path from here to end of parliament [and the 2015 general election] in a way that takes voters along with them”.

“There was a price to pay by going into government – and being in government affects the support of any party.

“They haven’t got decades of experience of being in government and it’s tough being a junior partner,” Coetzee said of the party that was born out of the 1988 merger between the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party.

His experience in managing coalitions – a feature of the DA’s governance track record – and honing messages that resonate with voters are key attributes that will stand him in good stead.

“It’s about coalitions, but also about building a brand over time,” Coetzee said.