Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has accused Sir Keir Starmer’s “far-left” Labour Party of interfering in the US election.
The Trump-Vance campaign filed a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) accusing Labour of illegal foreign campaign donations.
In a statement, the campaign’s co-manager Susie Wiles campaign claimed: “The far-left Labour Party has inspired Kamala’s dangerously liberal policies and rhetoric.
“In recent weeks, they have recruited and sent party members to campaign for Kamala in critical battleground states, attempting to influence our election.”
The complaint referenced a Washington Post report that suggested “strategists linked to Britain’s Labour Party have been offering advice to Kamala Harris about how to earn back disaffected voters and run a winning campaign from the center left”.
It also mentioned a Daily Telegraph report that suggested Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, his director of communications, “attended a convention in Chicago and met with Ms Harris’s campaign team”.
The complaint also cited a now deleted LinkedIn post from Sofia Patel, head of operations at the Labour party, who wrote that “nearly 100” current and former Labour party staff would be travelling to the US to help elect Ms Harris.
Mr Trump’s lawyers argue such support amounts to “contributions” from foreign actors, in violation of US campaign finance laws.
Probably fine, based on the little information we know about this. But another example of how the new Labour administration doesn’t understand optics of being in government. You can do this in opposition… and you can boast about it on socials. But being in government is a different game.
I still doubt this will go anywhere, though.
What are you talking about?
It’s quite naïve that the Labour party have allowed any hint of election interference to even be perceived. Sorry, was that not obvious from reading the article?
Not really, Labour has absolutely no reason to think Trump will be a positive effect on UK politics. And its members expressing a preference is none of their legal or moral business.
It would be much more Naive and harmful to labour as a party to be banning party members from expressing views on foreign democratic governments.
UK voters don’t tend to be fans of parties that try to silence members on such things. Even less so when Tory and reform party members are very openly helping the other side.
Any accusations of interference are between your legal jurisdiction and the parties accepting any funds or help. The UK Labour Party has no legal authority or moral right to an opinion at all.
The Labour party isn’t just an opposition party. I think they don’t quite understand that yet. They’re the party of government. Think about what that means in terms of diplomacy and geopolitics.
Of course, of course, of course people are free to do what they want and express opinions they hold strongly. However it’s a little different when you represent the party of government. Why open yourself up to the accusations? Which is exactly what has happened. An easy own goal. What would we say if the Russian Kremlin sent election campaigners to our country? Even they aren’t as stupid to do that overtly.
The answer is so simple though. Tell anyone wanting to do so that they are free as long as they don’t use the Labour party name and are not in any way funded by the Labour party.
And that is exactly what is happening.
This is trump complaining about indevidual Labour members acting independently.
What he claims is happening is no more then his own invention. No official of the government is acting in the name of the UK gov or the party.
Its almost like you do not realise a huge % of the current government were doing the job pre 2010. Its not like labour is children with no experience.
If they’re going voluntarily and without the backing of any Labour party machinery then cool.
However this doesn’t suggest that.
Like I say, it’s more about optics here. Which is where the naivety comes in.
If we have reached a stage where perception of doing the right thing is not an issue then… well, I’m perhaps behind the times. And maybe we have given the last Trump administration and the last Tory government. I just find it disappointing that Labour have kicked off their government making similar easy own goals. Not just this, but on the cash for clothes / Taylor Swift tickets fiasco.
So your complaint is a social network (not used much in the UK) Post from a labour member. Talks about lots of other labour members agreeing with One side of your democratic election.
You seem to think there are some trademark regulations that limit what members of the party can say they are doing together. As I said, at no point is the Labour Party going to tell groups of members they have no right to support a foreign party. The PLP (parliamentary Labour Party, consists just of MPs) dose not have the legal right to do that.
That is just not how political parties work in the UK. You will find social media posts all over the nation of different local parties or groups of members coming together to support a cause.
Heck, the whole structure of our government is such that it is possible to have the official Labour Party disagree with the government and argue at times. That is the very way our representative democracy works.
You saw it with Boris Johnson, Liss truss etc As the government and the Tory party as a whole started to argue amongst themselves. That was a bad example but far from a rare event in UK politics.
Party names and parliamentary bodies are linked with complex multilevel structures because they are by definition democratic organisations that have free members able to act as groups.
Seeing the Labour Name assigned to a group of individual members of the party in no way indicates the government is involved.
Nor would it actually be seen as a bad thing if the UK government actually said hey we don’t like a leader you are thinking of voting. He’ll trump did it over Corbyn and Obama did it over Brexit.
For me, it’s not about legality. I think that’s what you might be misunderstanding with my point. I’ve said multiple times that, for me, it’s about perception and optics. It’s about not even giving your opponents ammunition against you. You do that by being completely neutral. And the fact that the Labour party wasn’t on top of this shows it’s naivety.
And it was, in my opinion, absolutely foolish of them to do this and showed how poor they both were with foreign policy. But that’s another matter.
I’m happy for you to disagree with me on this, let’s just leave it as that. Just my opinion on the matter. Not that it matters 😅.
Enjoy your weekend.
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