Trump's campaign accuses the British Labor Party of "foreign interference" in the US elections

In a dramatic example of the problems facing Europe’s ruling class due to the US elections, Republican candidate Donald Trump has filed an official complaint against Britain’s ruling Labor Party for “blatant foreign interference”.

The reason for the letter was the deployment of a hundred Labor Party employees to America to support the campaign of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

Former Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Trump’s complaint, filed with the Federal Election Commission, alleges that “the relationship between the Harris campaign and the Labor Party creates a reasonable inference that the Labor Party made and the Harris campaign accepted illegal foreign national contributions .”

It cites reports from the WashingtonPost that “strategists associated with the British Labor Party have given Kamala Harris advice on how to win back disaffected voters,” and of The Daily Telegraph that “Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, and Matthew Doyle, Director of Communications, attended the convention in Chicago and met with Ms Harris’s campaign team” and “Deborah Mattinson, (Prime Minister) Sir Keir’s Director of Strategy, also attended September to Washington to brief Ms. Harris’s presidential campaign on Labor’s election-winning approach.”

The Telegraph reported on a LinkedIn post by Labor’s head of operations advertising: “I have almost 100 Labor Party staff (current and former) heading to the US in the coming weeks, heading to North Carolina, Nevada , Pennsylvania and Virginia. I have ten spots available for anyone who wants to go to the battleground state of North Carolina – we will get you housing.”

According to the newspaper, “Labour activists who want to help with the Harris campaign have been told that they will have to pay for their own flights and car rental, but that Democratic volunteers would provide accommodation… any staff planning to travel is expected to they book annual leave. for the duration of their journey.”

Unpaid volunteer work by foreigners was previously declared legal by the Commission, which is why the Trump campaign is demanding financial contributions.

Starmer responded on this basis by brushing aside the matter and telling reporters that Labor volunteers “were 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 did in previous elections, that’s what they’re doing in this election and it’s very simple.”

Only there is nothing “straightforward” about these elections for the British ruling class. Whether the work is legal and customary is irrelevant. What matters is that Starmer has attacked himself – in the usual absurd Republican fashion – as a “far-left” inspiration for “Kamala’s dangerously liberal policies and rhetoric” by the team surrounding the man he is desperately trying to please as the potential next. president of the United States.

In fact, if Politics According to reports, the Labor Party is mainly advising the Democratic Party on how to move further to the right on immigration, how to scrap green pretenses, mix “pragmatism with patriotism”, “moderate uncompromising activist positions” and “extremely left-wing stigma’, in reference to the purges against Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters.

The Republicans’ complaint against the Labor Party even invokes the American War of Independence against its activities: “When representatives of the British government previously tried to go door to door in America, it did not end well for them.”

Yet Starmer’s only response to whether the row would damage his relationship with Trump was a reference to his fawning meeting with the future dictator in New York last month: “We have built a good relationship. We are grateful to him for taking the time… for that dinner… We have had a very good, constructive discussion and of course, as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, I will work with whoever returns the American people as their President in the future. their elections, which are now very close.”

The British in particular, but also all of Europe’s ruling classes and their governments, are trapped in a painful limbo as the American elections approach.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden arrive for a family photo at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Friday, October 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Having invested time, enormous resources and diplomatic cachet to secure Britain’s position as the right hand of US imperialism in the war against Russia in Ukraine, the Labor government is deeply concerned about the change of direction threatened by a government Trump. which could leave America’s European allies completely adrift. For a British imperialism whose influence on the world stage depends so much on its partnership with the US, the concerns are most serious.

There is no doubt that the Labor government would prefer a Harris win, and the perhaps unusually close involvement of key Labor strategists in her campaign shows the strength of that feeling.

But at the same time, it must desperately keep Trump busy to prepare for the close relations it would seek with a Republican presidency. For all the talk of the Harris and Starmer campaigns jointly flying the banner of “liberal values,” Starmer would look to repair that relationship with President Trump regardless of the means by which he enters the White House – through elections, or through a judicial or military coup. . This would be not only in pursuit of the predatory interests of British imperialism, but also in unity with Trump against the reaction that would develop in the working class.

The problem for the Labor leader is that Trump’s campaign is not interested in meeting him halfway or even partially. In previous US election contests, some degree of bipartisanship was accepted by the British government as part of normal politics. But Trump’s motto is “My way or the highway.” The British Prime Minister and his team have failed to fully understand the message and its implications.

In response to the Trump campaign’s complaint, a Labor official said Politics“It says a lot about the current level of political discourse on both sides of the Atlantic that an innocuous LinkedIn post from a party worker has turned into a diplomatic event.”

It says more about the political character of the Labor leadership, but doesn’t understand why.

Starmer is, even in a crowded field, a conspicuous political incompetent – given the halo of a completely undeserved parliamentary majority. But his bungling only highlights the foreshocks, affecting all of Europe, of the politically seismic elections taking place on November 5.

Trump’s optimistic attitude toward “foreign interference” from Europe is not just a matter of campaign style, but of policies that should continue during his presidency. Moreover, it is only the barest form of an America First economic program that has been continued in all its essence by the Biden administration and would be maintained by Harris.

The closer the elections get, the more the conflicts between American and European imperialism, coupled with attempts to carve out a new modus vivendi, will come to the fore – all of which are fundamentally at the expense and contrary with the struggles of the working class in Europe, America and around the world.

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