When Sofia Patel, the head of operations for Britain’s Labour Party, posted on the site last week that she was coordinating nearly 100 current and former party officials to campaign in battleground states in the final weeks of the US presidential election, little could she have forecast.
In a formal complaint to the FEC, the deputy general counsel for Trump’s presidential campaign declared: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”
Last week marked the 243rd anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown, a military victory that ensured the United States’ enduring independence from “Great Britain.”
Bombastic as that sounds, hardly of minor significance is that a Labour party which has openly sought to strengthen its relationships with Trump and his entourage is now formally accused of “blatant foreign interference” on behalf of his rival, Kamala Harris.
So what’s going on here?
According to the FEC rules, foreign volunteers are permitted to work for US campaigns as long as they are volunteers and are not being paid for their services.
Labor describes the operatives in question as volunteers. While Patel’s LinkedIn post explained to anyone looking to campaign that “we will sort your housing,” Labour’s new argument is that this was vague language.
Sir Keir Starmer told the press last night that Labour officials going to the US for campaigning are “doing it as volunteers; they’re staying, I think, with other volunteers over there.”
