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Donald Trump‘s accusation of British Labor is serious and risks complicating future relations between the United States and the United Kingdom. The former American president attacked the “clear foreign interference” carried out by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer‘s Labor Party in this campaign. And he didn’t do it with a joke, during a rally with his supporters cheering him on.
This time the Republicans moved through official channels, presenting a complaint to the Federal Election Commission in Washington, requesting an investigation into the activities in the United States of some pro-Democrat British Labor representatives, and raising the suspicion that the Labor Party could having illegally financed Kamala Harris’ race. The documents presented by Trump’s lawyers refer to a since-deleted social media post in which a Labor official claimed that nearly 100 activists, both current and former Labor staffers, were about to travel to the United States, and in particularly in some Swing States, to get Harris to help.
Starmer downplays it: they are volunteers, it has always happened
Also from London they confirmed that some strategists of the Labor Party traveled to the USA to meet the managers of the Democratic campaign and bring the experience of the overwhelming victory obtained in the British elections in July. Some of Starmer’s senior advisers, including his current chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, also attended the Democratic convention in August.
British Prime Minister Starmer said Trump’s complaint against his party “will not jeopardize” relations between Washington and London if the former president wins the US election next month. “We recently had a fruitful and constructive discussion in New York and, of course, as prime minister of the United Kingdom, I will work with whoever the American people choose as president in the election,” Starmer said yesterday, while traveling to a summit of Commonwealth in Samoa.
Starmer, however, explained that “in every recent election, several Labor leaders have participated and supported the American Democrats”, just as the Republicans have been supported by the British right. And he clarified that this year too the British activists moved on their own initiative, as volunteers: thus denying any responsibility and financing of the British centre-left party.
