Lisa Nandy has refused to follow Kamala Harris’ lead by calling Donald Trump a fascist.
The US vice president made the surprise remark at a CNN town hall-style event on Wednesday.
It came after former White House chief of staff John Kelly that Trump fits the definition of a fascist.
Asked by moderator Anderson Cooper if she agreed with Kelly, Harris said: “Yes I do.”
On Times Radio this morning, Nandy was asked if she agreed with the Democratic presidential nominee.
She said: “I’m not going to criticise Kamala Harris. I think that she’s fighting her own campaign and she’s entitled to speak for herself, but I wouldn’t use that language about other politicians.
“I think over the course of time, both in American politics and here in the UK, we’ve got into a very base political debate where we’ve had far too much people using negative language towards one another and I’ve always believed, whether it’s politicians in my own party doing it or politicians in other parties, that we can fundamentally disagree on matters of policy, but we should treat each other with respect and that is not the sort of language that I would use.”
The culture secretary insisted Harris was someone she “admired enormously”.
But she added: “I have the right to choose my own language and I’ve stood in the House of Commons too much over recent years with people using language like traitor towards one another, particularly during Brexit and criticised and called out that language.
“I can profoundly disagree with people in politics, but it’s my personal belief that you have to, you lose the ability to understand one another if you don’t treat each other on a personal level with the utmost respect.”
Nandy’s comments came amid the ongoing row over the Trump campaign accusing Labour of “foreign interference” in the US election.
In a legal letter published on Tuesday, they said Labour had recruited activists to send across the Atlantic to campaign for Harris.
The Republican nominee’s team also pointed out that Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and his director of communications, Matthew Doyle, “attended a convention in Chicago and met with Ms Harris’s campaign team”.
The complaint to the US Federal Election Commission stems from a now-deleted LinkedIn post by Labour’s head of operations Sofia Patel, which claimed almost 100 current and former party officials were heading to campaign for the Democrats in battleground states.
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “It is common practice for campaigners of all political persuasions from around the world to volunteer in US elections.
“Where Labour activists take part, they do so at their own expense, in accordance with the laws and rules.”