LONDON: The UK government on Wednesday played down claims of meddling in the US election, after Donald Trump’s team accused British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s party of “blatant foreign interference” in the election pointing out that Labour Party members travelled to help Kamala Harris’s campaign.

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.

Trump’s team files an official complaint to election commission

The claim from Trump’s team blew up as Starmer jetted to a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) on the Pacific island of Samoa, prompting a mid-air rebuttal.

‘Volunteers go every polls’

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 just 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 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 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.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2024