Are Labour's US volunteers really the villains or is Trump at it?

We’re endlessly bathed in Trump’s hatred, extremism and lies to the extent that it’s become almost mundane. His battering ram assaults on democratic institutions – literally, on January 6 – are a given. His dishonesty is priced in. Walz has been trying to waken voters to the reality of the threat he poses before it’s too late.

And yet it’s Sir Keir Starmer, former human rights lawyer and “decent, public spirited man” (to quote his opponent Rishi Sunak) who is being painted as the bad guy of US politics right now while Trump plays the victim. This, over Labour party volunteers working for free on the Harris campaign – something that political operatives from across the political spectrum have done in US elections for decades. Enough already. Starmer is no meddler; Donald Trump is the destructive force at work here.

Foreigners volunteering on US election campaigns are commonplace. It's not just Labour - there are Lib Dems campaigning for Harris too right now, including the leader of the Scottish party Alex Cole Hamilton. And there are of course strong links between the Conservatives and the Republican party – Trump has even had a British ex-Prime Minister endorsing him, in Liz Truss, while Reform leader Nigel Farage has attended campaign events in support of his friend Donald Trump.

A former Tory special adviser is reported to be in the States campaigning for Trump right now. The muted response from Conservatives to the row (it wasn’t even mentioned by the official opposition at Prime Minister’s Questions) underlines that all parties have a history of this sort of transatlantic activity.

Tim Walz (Image: free) Here's how it’s working for one couple I know who are in the US right now, campaigning in Pennsylvania. They paid their own air fares and car hire, and are staying in a friend’s spare room. They are knocking doors as part of the Democrat Get Out The Vote effort, alongside people from other US states who have come to assist. No one has batted an eyelid at them being British, though one friendly voter was keen to tell them all about his prized British sports car.

At the end, they’ll do a spot of sightseeing. It’s not mind-control by a foreign power, it’s a world away from Russian troll factories, it’s the repetitive work of local campaigning. Even if you think it shouldn’t happen, what counts is American election rules and they allow it, for both Republicans and Democrats.

Yes, there is frustration within Labour at the party’s head of operations Sofia Patel putting on Linked In that she would “sort housing” for Labour staffers past and present who wanted to take leave from their jobs and go. If Labour had paid air fares or housing expenses for these people, it would be a different story, but Labour has insisted that didn’t happen and that Patel was coordinating things in her own spare time.

No matter: with that Linked In post, the Republican Party had enough to go on to complain to the Federal Election Commission in Washington about interference by the “far-left” Labour party, a performative act that has more to do with electioneering than any real concern about rule-breaking.

And whaddaya know, all this pushes off the front pages the very things that Tim Walz has been warning about.

It's quite extraordinary how adept Trump and other hard-right leaders are at shrugging off scrutiny. They have an uncanny ability to portray their opponents as sleazy over slight infringements or groundless allegations while doing as they damn well please and getting away with it.

A fully contextualised report of this story would have said this: that Trump, a convicted felon also found liable in a civil court for sexual abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll, who tried to overturn the result of the 2020 US election, has accused the UK Labour party of election interference. It would add that Trump’s accusation comes just days after his billionaire crony, Elon Musk, stirred up controversy by paying out million-dollar cheques to people in swing states who signed a petition in Trump’s support.

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It might also add that in 2016, Trump openly invited Russian hackers to target his then-opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, saying “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

It would not need to spell out the obvious, that Trump’s hypocrisy is off the scale.

So what does all this really say about the future of the US and UK? It says that Trump is behaving like Trump, showing utter disregard for relationships with allies that have endured for more than a century. This row is far more his bad than Labour’s and to see it as otherwise is to be played.

The whole “row” appears to be two things: an egregious example of Boris Johnson’s “dead cat strategy” – creating a shocking distraction – to deflect attention and confuse voters; and the latest part of a wider, systematic attempt by the Republicans to undermine trust in the US election process. That they damage America’s deepest overseas alliance in the process doesn’t appear to matter to them at all.

We’re getting a glimpse of how chaotic and damaging a second Trump presidency could be. We all have a stake in this election, with everything from the global climate change response, the future of Russian expansionism and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East hanging in the balance. Keir Starmer is one of a shrinking band of “decent, public spirited” people at the top table of global diplomacy.

If UK volunteers can help ensure Kamala Harris joins him there instead of Donald Trump, good luck to them.

Rebecca McQuillan is a freelance journalist specialising in politics and Scottish affairs. She can be found on X at @BecMcQ