Britain’s new government found itself on a collision course with former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday after his campaign filed a complaint that accused the governing Labour Party of interfering in the American presidential election by recruiting volunteers to canvas for Vice President Kamala Harris in battleground states.
In a letter to the Federal Election Commission dated Monday, a lawyer for the Trump campaign said that Labour’s recruitment of volunteers, as well as recent meetings in which Labour officials offered advice to the Harris campaign, constituted “blatant foreign interference” in the election.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer brushed off the accusations, saying that Labour activists had worked on an unpaid basis in multiple American elections. Mr. Starmer, who had dinner with Mr. Trump during a recent visit to New York, said the issue would not poison their relations if Mr. Trump were elected.
“As prime minister of the United Kingdom, I will work with whoever the American people return as their president in their elections, which are very close now,” Mr. Starmer told reporters on his way to a summit meeting of the Commonwealth in Samoa.
Mr. Starmer said that Labour activists had volunteered in their spare time, not as employees of the party. They are expected to cover their own travel expenses and are typically put up by Democratic campaign volunteers in the United States. “That’s really straightforward,” he said.
But the Trump campaign’s lawyer, Gary Lawkowski, argued in the complaint that the donation of time and services by British volunteers amounted to “illegal foreign national contributions” to the Harris campaign. He also cited conversations between senior Labour strategists, including Morgan McSweeney, who is now Mr. Starmer’s chief of staff, and advisers to Ms. Harris.
“When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them,” Mr. Lawkowski wrote, citing the recent 243rd anniversary of the surrender of British troops after the Battle of Yorktown during the Revolutionary War. “It appears the Labour Party and the Harris for President campaign have forgotten the message.”
Mr. Trump himself has not addressed the topic of the Labour volunteers. But he is no stranger to trans-Atlantic politicking — in either direction.
In 2019, then-President Trump called into a London radio show hosted by Nigel Farage, the right-wing political figure, to offer full-throated support for Boris Johnson, who was then prime minister and had just called a general election. He also sharply criticized the Labour leader at the time, Jeremy Corbyn.
“He’d be so bad, he’d take you in such a bad way,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Farage in reference to Mr. Corbyn. “He’d take you into such bad places.”
An aggrieved Mr. Corbyn posted on social media at the time, “Donald Trump is trying to interfere in Britain’s election to get his friend Boris Johnson elected.”
Mr. Farage, who now holds a seat in Parliament and heads an anti-immigrant party, Reform U.K., has also campaigned for Mr. Trump. In the final week of Mr. Trump’s failed re-election campaign against President Biden in 2020, Mr. Trump welcomed Mr. Farage to the stage at a rally in Goodyear, Ariz.
Mr. Farage initially announced that he would skip the most recent British general election because he wanted to focus on helping Mr. Trump win back the White House. “I intend to help with the grass-roots campaign in the U.S.A. in any way that I can,” he posted on social media, before reversing course a week later.
Mr. Starmer has tried to steer clear of the American election, though he made a highly visible outreach to Mr. Trump when he met with the former president while in the United States to attend the United Nations General Assembly in September. He has not spoken publicly about the meeting, except to say that he and Mr. Trump had a “good relationship.”
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