WASHINGTON, DC — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer had spent the summer making cautious overtures to woo Donald Trump. Then a Labour staffer threw a diplomatic grenade onto LinkedIn.
It was less than a month ago that Starmer bagged not just a meeting with the Republican presidential candidate, but also a dinner at Trump Tower that stretched into the night.
British government officials were ecstatic at the outcome of the encounter, which took place during Starmer’s visit to New York for a global summit and saw the unpredictable ex-president praise the newish British PM. Their tête-à-tête ended up lasting two hours, with joyful aides said to have called the airport to push back the departure time of Starmer’s waiting plane as it readied to return home.
The successful head-to-head was a coup for a left-wing prime minister desperate to get into the good graces of the hard-right possible returnee to the White House. The reserved former human rights barrister and prosecutor from Britain could hardly be more different from the bombastic and controversial American businessman.
But in a land where the “special relationship” with the U.S. is a defining one, even the staunchest socialist in the new government understands the need to keep Trump onside.
All that hard work risks being undone, however, after a Labour aide took to the business networking site LinkedIn with a callout for staffers to help campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
“I have nearly 100 Labour Party staff (current and former) going to the U.S. in the next few weeks heading to North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” Labour Head of Operations Sofia Patel wrote. “I have 10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of North Carolina — we will sort your housing.”
“We will sort your housing”
Patel had no reason to think she was about to cause a diplomatic incident. She had shared similar posts on LinkedIn in the preceding months. “I’m planning a trip for Labour Party staff to help our friends across the pond elect their first female president (second time lucky!),” she wrote in August. “Let’s show the Democrats how to win elections!”
But this time her actions triggered a chain of events that risks damaging the delicate relationship Starmer and his team have spent months forging with the possible future leader of the free world.
An X (formerly Twitter) account named “max” with a paid-for blue tick and a profile photo of the late French writer Albert Camus posted a screenshot of the Patel post, after a Labour staffer friend flagged it to the account owner 14 hours after it went live. Max wrote, without providing proof, that those campaigning were “funded by the Labour Party.”
Then the Politics UK account — which shares political headlines with its more than 300,000-strong following, prompting instant viral boosts — picked it up.
The post bounced around political Twitter, shared via pro-Trump accounts with ever-larger followings. Then things really got out of control.
X owner and Trump supporter Elon Musk shared one of the screenshots with a simple comment: “This is illegal.” Whether he was right was irrelevant: The grenade exploded.
Mainstream news organizations began running headlines as Republicans weighed in to criticize Labour. Pro-Trump House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said “foreign nationals are not allowed to be involved in any way in U.S. elections,” while Senator Tom Cotton said the British invasion of campaigners was “yet another reason” to vote for Trump.
Labour swiftly scrambled into furious reverse ferret mode. Top brass shut down the central coordination of campaigners — even though the plans appeared to fall within U.S. electoral rules on foreign volunteer spending, since the activists were funding their own expenses. Patel deleted all her previous LinkedIn posts about the plan. Aides tried to play down the row in conversations with reporters.
But it was too late. One state Democrat group canceled its plans to host Labour activists. Whatever the rights and wrongs, the outrage had become toxic; it was now simply too damaging to have Brits knocking on voters’ doors.
There the matter may have remained, had the former president himself not weighed in.
Courting attention
Just as the row appeared to have died down, on Monday night the Trump campaign revealed its legal team had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission watchdog.
It alleged that the Labour actions amounted to “foreign interference” and were therefore a breach of campaign funding rules. The crux of the argument rested on the LinkedIn post, and whether it could be interpreted as implying Labour was pumping significant funds into the attempts to get Harris elected.
Electoral rules in the U.S. stipulate that overseas volunteers can help out as long as they fund their own expenses and do not make campaign decisions. There is a $1,000 dollar limit on travel bills, but costs for food and board are uncapped. U.S. locals can put overseas volunteers up in their homes — as long as those homes aren’t rentals.
In its first on-the-record statement, Labour insisted staffers heading to the U.S. were doing so within the rules. “Where Labour activists take part, they do so at their own expense, in accordance with the laws and rules,” the statement said. But Republicans were reluctant to take them at their word.
“In these kinds of investigations it’s the details that matter,” said Jason Torchinsky, a Republican finance lawyer. “Labour can claim the campaigners are funding themselves, but the clear central coordination of this and some of the wording on LinkedIn raises questions. There is certainly enough smoke here that it’s worth checking whether there’s a fire.”
Some observers argued the Republican response was just Trump being Trump — weaponizing an issue to create a political row.
“This complaint against the Harris campaign by the Trump campaign seems calculated to generate headlines and campaign talking points for candidate Trump and has little to do with the legal merits of the complaint,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor in electoral law at Stetson University, Florida.
She added that the Federal Election Commission was “notorious for not enforcing campaign finance laws” — another reason little is expected to come of the complaint. The FEC’s own timetabling suggests it won’t respond before the election is over.
Grenade blowback
Regardless of the merits of the legal complaint, internal fire began to turn on Patel for the ambiguous wording of her LinkedIn posts.
“She’s getting a ton of blowback on this,” said one person familiar with the initial coordination of Labour campaigners, “particularly from colleagues who think she acted recklessly. Labour is distancing themselves from her, not only from her actions but from her professionally.”
Some, however, jumped to the defense of an aide who had just wanted to help, and who is unable to defend herself in public.
“This has been blown way out of proportion and it’s unfair for the staffer — who has always stayed behind the scenes — to be thrown into [the] international spotlight for what is clearly an innocuous project,” said Tara Jane O’Reilly, a former Labour aide, on Twitter. “I hope the higher-ups at Labour are supporting her.”
Labour allies in Washington agreed the furor was a storm in a teacup — and argued that despite causing waves in the U.K., the row was having little impact in the U.S.
“In a multibillion dollar election in the United States, the question around a handful of volunteers coming over from the U.K. is a sideshow of a sideshow,” said Josh Freed, a senior vice president at the center-left think tank Third Way in D.C.
He noted that volunteer exchanges happen each election between Labour and the Democrats, as well as between the U.K. Conservatives and Republicans. Even in the U.K. general election last summer, a Cabinet minister offered to coordinate a team of Republicans to help the Tories campaign.
Even very senior right-wingers have been known to assist each other across the pond.
In February, former Prime Minister Liz Truss appeared at the right-wing CPAC conference, while Reform UK leader Nigel Farage joined Trump at his campaign rallies in 2016 and 2020. Both Farage and former Tory PM Boris Johnson attended the most recent Republican National Convention. Conservatives argued it was different for Labour now it’s in government.
Never relax
Freed admitted, however, that Labour had been clumsy in how its scheme became publicized — allowing Trump and his supporters to make hay. The free hit put a downer on long-standing work between Labour and the Democrats to coordinate and bolster the center left.
“There’s a general lesson in politics that everything that happens digitally happens in public and people need to be very careful and explicit and deliberate about what they are saying,” he said. “Everything is now viewed and interpreted through a partisan lens.”
The unnamed person quoted above agreed a long-standing, hitherto uncontroversial campaign scheme had been weaponized for Trump’s political purposes — using Starmer and the U.K. government as collateral. “They are trying to turn the whole foreign interference story on its head,” the person said about the MAGA camp.
The concern for Starmer is whether his delicate attempts to get Trump on side have been rendered pointless, or whether the damage can be repaired.
Farage, who is influential in the Trump camp, said Starmer had “insulted the incoming Trump administration,” while Richard Grennell, tipped in Washington as a possible Trump pick for secretary of state, criticized Labour on BBC television.
Starmer himself was forced to insist the row would not jeopardize his relationship with Trump, if the Republican candidate does indeed return to the White House.
“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,” he told reporters.
“We had a good, constructive discussion and, of course, as prime minister of the United Kingdom I will work with whoever the American people return as their president.”
John Johnston contributed reporting to this article.
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