Trump accuses British Labour of interfering with the vote by supporting Harris
Republicans filed a complaint with the Washington Election Commission against Premier Starmer's party
from our correspondent in New York Luca Veronese
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Key points
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Donald Trump's accusation against British Labour is serious and risks complicating future relations between the US and the UK. The former US president attacked the 'blatant foreign interference' by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour Party in this campaign. And he did not do so with a joke, during a rally with his supporters cheering him on.
The Republicans took official action this time, filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in Washington, asking for an investigation into the activities in the US of some pro-Democratic Labour members, and raising suspicions that the Labour Party may have illegally funded Kamala Harris's race. The documents submitted by Trump's lawyers refer to a post circulated on social media, and later deleted, in which a Labour official claimed that nearly 100 activists, current and former Labour staff members, were about to travel to the US, and in particular to some Swing States, to help Harris.
Starmer downplays: they are volunteers, it has always happened
.London also confirmed that some Labour party strategists had travelled to the US to meet with Democratic campaign managers and bring back the experience of the landslide victory in the British elections in July. Some of Starmer's senior advisors, including his current chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, had also attended the Democratic convention in August.
British Prime Minister Starmer said the complaint filed by Trump against his party "will not jeopardise" 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 whomever the American people choose as president in the election," Starmer said yesterday, while en route to a Commonwealth summit in Samoa.
However, Starmer explained that 'in every recent election, several Labour members have participated and supported the American Democrats', just as the Republicans have been supported by the British right. And he clarified that the British activists again this year acted on their own initiative, as volunteers: thus denying any responsibility and funding of the British centre-left party.
