(BSS/AFP) – The government in London on Wednesday played down claims of meddling in the US election, after Donald Trump’s team charged that having members of Britain’s ruling Labour party work for his opponent Kamala Harris’s campaign was “blatant foreign interference”.
Trump’s legal team filed an official complaint to the US Federal Election Commission, alleging that the “British Labour Party made, and the (Kamala) Harris campaign accepted, illegal foreign national contributions”.
The submission cited media reports that Labour officials, including the prime minister’s new chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, travelled to the United States to advise the Democratic party campaign.
They also included a now-deleted LinkedIn post by Labour director of operations Sofia Patel calling for volunteers to travel to North Carolina, and offering to “sort out your housing”.
Foreign nationals are allowed to volunteer in US elections but may not be compensated.
The claim from Trump’s team claim blew up as Starmer jetted to a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) on the Pacific island of Samoa, prompting a mid-air rebuttal.
Starmer insisted it was normal for volunteers to campaign and that he had established “a good relationship” with Trump, whom he met for dinner over two hours at his Trump Tower residence in New York last month.
“The Labour party has volunteers who have gone over (to the United States) pretty much every election,” he told reporters travelling with him.
“They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying, I think, with other volunteers over there.
“That’s what they’ve done in previous elections, that’s what they’re doing in this election and that’s really straightforward.”
Starmer also denied suggestions that it could damage relations with the UK’s most important ally should Republican party candidate Trump beat Harris and secure a return to the White House after next month’s vote.
Other senior Labour ministers tried to smooth over any cracks. Defence Secretary John Healey also insisted any Labour members were helping in a personal capacity and that had no bearing on formal bilateral ties.
“We will work with whoever the American people elects,” he told a joint news conference with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius in London.
But Healey — an MP for more than 25 years — indicated that Trump’s team was playing politics. “This (the filing to the FEC) is in the middle of an election campaign,” he noted.
– ‘This is war’ –
How Starmer’s centre-left government will deal with a second Trump presidency has long been a source of speculation in the UK, given the party’s vocal criticisms of him when Labour was in opposition.
David Lammy, who is now Foreign Secretary, called Trump a “woman-hating neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” in a 2018 article for Time magazine but since his appointment in July has trod a more diplomatic line.
Both Boris Johnson and his predecessor as prime minister for the previous right-wing Conservative administrations have been critical of Trump, only to temper their views when he came to power.
Trump himself waded into the British election campaign in 2019 by launching a stinging attack on Starmer’s predecessor as Labour leader, the veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn, saying he would be “bad” for the country.
He also urged Johnson to unite with his friend, the eurosceptic hardliner Nigel Farage, to deliver Britain’s departure from the European Union, prompting Corbyn to accuse him of interference.
In the event, Corbyn lost spectacularly and Johnson won, in part after Farage agreed not to run candidates from his Brexit Party in key seats needed by the Tories.
Adding to the latest row is Trump supporter Elon Musk, who wrote on his X site on Tuesday “this is war” after the Center for Countering Digital Hate campaign group suggested one of its objectives was “to kill Musk’s Twitter” — X’s former name.
The group and think-tank is led by a former Labour adviser and McSweeney is a former director.
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