The government in London on Wednesday played down claims of meddling in the US Election, after Donald Trump\u2019s team charged that having members of Britain\u2019s ruling Labour Party work for his opponent Kamala Harris\u2019s campaign was \u201cblatant foreign interference\u201d. Trump\u2019s legal team filed an official complaint to the US Federal Election Commission, alleging that the \u201cBritish Labour Party made, and the (Kamala) Harris campaign accepted, illegal foreign national contributions\u201d. The submission cited media reports that Labour officials, including the prime minister\u2019s 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 \u201csort out your housing\u201d. Foreign nationals are allowed to volunteer in US elections but may not be compensated. The claim from Trump\u2019s 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 \u201ca good relationship\u201d with Trump, whom he met for dinner over two hours at his Trump Tower residence in New York last month. \u201cThe Labour Party has volunteers who have gone over (to the United States) pretty much every election,\u201d he told reporters travelling with him. \u201cThey\u2019re doing it in their spare time, they\u2019re doing it as volunteers, they\u2019re staying, I think, with other volunteers over there. \u201cThat\u2019s what they\u2019ve done in previous elections, that\u2019s what they\u2019re doing in this election and that\u2019s really straightforward.\u201d Starmer also denied suggestions that it could damage relations with the UK\u2019s most important ally should Republican party candidate Trump beat Harris and secure a return to the White House after next month\u2019s vote. Other senior Labour ministers tried to smooth over any cracks. Defence Secretary John Healey also insisted that any Labour members were helping in a personal capacity and that had no bearing on formal bilateral ties. \u201cWe will work with whoever the American people elects,\u201d he told a joint news conference with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius in London. However, Healey \u2014 an MP for more than 25 years \u2014 indicated that Trump\u2019s team was playing politics. \u201cThis (the filing to the FEC) is in the middle of an election campaign,\u201d he noted. \u2018This is war\u2019 How Starmer\u2019s centre-left government will deal with a second Trump presidency has long been a source of speculation in the UK, given the party\u2019s vocal criticisms of him when Labour was in opposition. David Lammy, who is now Foreign Secretary, called Trump a \u201cwoman-hating neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath\u201d 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\u2019s predecessor as Labour leader, the veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn, saying he would be \u201cbad\u201d for the country. He also urged Johnson to unite with his friend, the eurosceptic hardliner Nigel Farage, to deliver Britain\u2019s 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 \u201cThis is war\u201d after the Centre for Countering Digital Hate campaign group suggested one of its objectives was \u201cto kill Musk\u2019s Twitter\u201d \u2014X\u2019s former name. The group and think-tank is led by a former Labour adviser and McSweeney is a former director.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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