UK Election Interference
Members of Britain’s Labour Party are coming to the U.S. to stump for Kamala Harris.
That stinky cologne of desperation now wafting from the Kamala Harris campaign has gotten so strong that even lefties from across the pond are smelling it and responding.
Members of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party have become so concerned that they are literally willing to risk illegal behavior to boost Harris’s fledgling campaign. “I have 10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of North Carolina — we will sort your housing," read a message on a LinkedIn page from Sofia Patel, the head of the Labour Party’s UK operations.
Patel claims to have "nearly 100 Labour Party staff (current and former) going to the US in the next few weeks.” As noted above, these Labour Party Brits plan to campaign for Harris. This raises the obvious question: How are these foreign nationals not engaging in election interference?
Technically, it is not illegal for foreign nationals to volunteer for a candidate in a national election as long as they don’t violate federal election laws.
That said, the blatant hypocrisy from the Democrats on this is nearly unbelievable. As Hans von Spakovsky, who formerly served as a member of the Federal Election Commission, observes, “From the standpoint of public relations, the Democrat Party has been the loudest complainer about ‘foreign interference’ in elections, starting with their false claims about Trump and the Russian government. Yet, here they are accepting volunteers from a foreign political party? They are obviously soliciting and accepting foreign interference.”
Republican Wisconsin Representative Tom Tiffany wonders who’s footing the bill for these Labour Party volunteers. “If Democratic organizations are paying them, they need to comply with the campaign finance laws of the United States of America.” This means that Harris’s campaign cannot pay them a salary or cover their travel expenses or any room and board costs. If the Harris campaign does so, von Spakovsky points out, “then you do have a violation of the federal law against foreign contributions being made to, and accepted by, a campaign.”
This raises the question for the Harris campaign: Why even risk this? Do they believe that Labour’s victory in the UK can somehow be replicated in the U.S.?
While Labour’s victory earlier this year was technically classified as a landslide, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is in the position of prime minister with the support of just 34% of Britons. The majority of Britons were so disillusioned with years of Tory leadership that they simply didn’t vote.
Furthermore, since Labour’s election victory, the party’s favorability, and Starmer’s favorability, has fallen precipitously. Starmer’s approval rating has fallen by 49 points to a current net negative 30%. That hardly suggests a party that knows how to earn the people’s trust.
A bunch of Brits with their English accents stumping for Harris hardly seems like an effective strategy to get out the vote for Kamala.
Maybe the bigger question is, who is more desperate? The Harris campaign or the Labour Party? Is the fear of another Trump presidency so troubling to the British that they are willing to risk breaking U.S. election laws to support Harris? What is the political value of this move for Starmer’s government? If Harris wins, Labour ingratiates itself to a Harris administration — but doesn’t Starmer risk alienating a Trump administration if Trump wins?
Either way, the leftists in the UK are meddling in our elections, which should frustrate Americans.