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.
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.
In all fairness, what you think does not matter.
You seem to be misunderstanding what I mean by legal etc. ’
The actions you claim the party is to naive to prevent.
is impossible for them to prevent. Because the members are not constrained by the party.
Let me put it simply. You are Naive to believe US or UK political parties have such power over their membership. When I say they are not legally able. That means exercising such control over members would be a crime.
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