President Joe Biden speaks with Keir Starmer, newly-elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, while they attend a meeting of the North Atlantic Council, Wednesday, July 10, 2024, during the NATO Summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
A recent news story has uncovered what appears to be illegal foreign election interference by the U.K.’s Labour Party in the American presidential election on behalf of Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party. Alexandra Sharp reports for Foreign Policy’s World Brief, writing:
With just 13 days until the U.S. presidential election, former President Donald Trump’s campaign has accused British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party of “blatant foreign interference.” In a six-page legal complaint, a Trump campaign lawyer asked the U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) late Tuesday to investigate alleged illegal contributions from Labour to Vice President Kamala Harris’s team.
The complaint alleges that some senior Labour advisors traveled to the United States in recent months to meet Democrat strategists on the Labour Party’s dime. These participants reportedly discussed how Labour recently won back almost all of the industrialized areas that had abandoned the party in 2019.
Among those accused of election interference include Morgan McSweeney, who attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this August while serving as a political advisor to Downing Street. He is now Starmer’s chief of staff.
The Trump team also pointed to a since-deleted LinkedIn post from Sofia Patel, the head of operations at Labour, that said nearly 100 current and former party staff would be heading to the United States ahead of the election to help elect Harris in four key swing states. Patel’s post said 10 spots still needed to be filled in North Carolina, adding, “We will sort your housing.”
U.S. rules dictate that foreign citizens can volunteer on election campaigns but cannot make financial contributions, receive compensation, or participate in decision-making processes, meaning that Trump’s allegations will hinge on whether Labour covered any of the activists’ costs. On Wednesday, Labour refuted the accusations, saying supporters volunteer in their own time and all costs are at their own expense, including housing. It stressed the long history of U.K. citizens traveling to other countries, including the United States, to volunteer in elections, with Britons who are part of the center-left Labour Party typically supporting Democrats and Conservative members largely backing Republicans.
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