Around 100 British left-wing activists are being funded to campaign for Kamala Harris in swing states, leading to allegations of election interference and even American electoral law being broken.
A social media post by the Director of Operations of the UK’s governing party, Labour, recruiting “Labour Party staff” for campaigning in North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia has caused concern. The message from Labour’s Sofia Patel promised paid-for accommodation for those taking up the offer. She wrote, in the now-deleted post:
I have nearly 100 Labour Party staff (current and former) going to the US in the next few weeks heading to North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia. I have 10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of North Carolina – we will sort your housing. Email me on
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you’re interested. Thanks!
NBC15 News notes Patel has previously campaigned in the U.S. for the Hillary Clinton 2016 effort.
Some have expressed concern the group may have been breaking U.S. law, including Elon Musk and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recommended UK politicians would probably be better off back in Britain, fixing the country’s many problems rather than trying to interfere abroad. She stated: “You are breaking [Federal Election Commission] laws. Foreign nationals are not allowed to be involved in anyway in U.S. elections. Please go back to the UK and fix your own mass immigration problems that are ruining your country.”
As it is, under U.S. Federal Election Commission rules foreign nationals are allowed to volunteer on political campaigns but can’t be paid a salary, donate money, spend money on the campaign’s behalf, or take leadership (“decision-making”) roles. So whether these laws have been obeyed will have to be determined by the FEC, but influential Westminster gossip blog Guido Fawkes states its understanding that the trips to America for Labour staffers being paid for by the Democrat Party and they are campaigning “in their own time”, which would be legal.
Nevertheless, as Brexit leader Nigel Farage points out, having the UK governing party’s Director of Operations organise the volunteers doesn’t come without the possibility of unintended consequences for a government which has been trying to build bridges with the Trump campaign in case he’s the next President. Mr Farage said: “This is direct election interference by the governing Labour Party, and particularly stupid if Trump wins. Who is paying for all of this?”.
Mr Farage himself has campaigned on behalf of his friend President Trump, but clearly in the minds of some the scale of the organised effort to ship left-wing activists from the UK to the U.S. puts the move in a different category. Senator Tom Cotton said the arrival of Labour activists was “yet another reason to vote for president Trump” while former Breitbart editor Dr Sebastian Gorka decried the development.
Last month, it was reported by The Washington Post that senior Labour-linked strategists were advising the Kamala Harris campaign how to “earn back disaffected voters and run a winning campaign from the center left”.
