Prime minister Keir Starmer has downplayed a surprise attack from Donald Trump’s election campaign of “blatant foreign interference”.
The Republican nominee filed a legal complaint against Labour overnight after party officials flew to US swing states to voluntarily campaign for the Democrats’ Kamala Harris, Trump’s rival.
The Trump campaign sent a letter to the US Federal Election Commission overnight and said this contact between the “far-left” Labour Party and the Democrats was akin to “illegal foreign national contributions”.
The team added: “In recent weeks, they have recruited and sent party members to campaign for Kamala in critical battleground states, attempting to influence our election.”
The ex-president’s team said that Starmer’s party had “inspired Kamala’s dangerously liberal policies and rhetoric”.
But the UK prime minister has insisted that the individuals at the centre of this row were volunteers, rather than representing the Labour Party.
Speaking to reporters travelling with him to the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, he said: “The Labour party.... volunteers, have gone over pretty much every election.
“They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying I think with other volunteers over there.
“That’s what they’ve done in previous elections, that’s what they’re doing in this election and that’s really straightforward.”
Pressed over whether this will jeopardising his relationship with Trump, Starmer said: “No. I spent time in New York with President Trump, had dinner with him and my purpose in doing that was to make sure that between the two of us, we established a good relationship, which we did, and we’re grateful for him for making the time.
“We had a good, constructive discussion, and, of course as prime minster of the United Kingdom I will work with whoever the American people return as their president in their elections which are very close now.”
The US electorate will hit the ballot box on November 5. Harris and Trump are currently neck-and-neck in most polls.
The Republican nominee’s team also cited a report from the Telegraph which claimed 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”.
Trump’s campaign said: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.
“This past week marked the 243 anniversary of the surrender of British forces at the Battle of Yorktown, a military victory that ensured that the United States would be politically independent of Great Britian [sic].
“It appears that the Labour party and the Harris for President campaign have forgotten the message.”
This row stems from a now-deleted LinkedIn post by Labour’s head of operations Sofia Patel, which claims almost 100 current and former party officials were heading to the US to campaign for the Democrats in battleground states.
It adds: “We will sort your housing.”
But environment secretary Steve Reed told Times Radio that Labour has not organised any accommodation for those campaigning for Harris, adding: “They are private individuals, choosing to spend their time and money as they like.”
He insisted that it was “perfectly normal” for people to campaign in different countries.
There is no evidence that Labour has donated to Harris’s campaign.