Starmer political strategist went to US to share ‘lessons learned’ with Democrats – but Labour did not fund trip

Published

10 months ago

October 24, 2024

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A political strategist who worked on Sir Keir Starmer’s campaign has explained how she went to the US to share “lessons learned” with the Democrats following Labour’s election victory.

This week, the Trump campaign accused Labour of illegal interference after the party’s head of operations, Sofia Patel, posted on LinkedIn she was coordinating nearly 100 current and former party officials to campaign in battleground states.

Deborah Mattinson, who also worked with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock, told Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast she was asked to go to the US in September to talk to Democrats about Labour’s campaign by centrist Democratic thinktank Progressive Policy Institute.

She had already finished working for the Labour Party when she went to the US.

Ms Mattinson was speaking on Tuesday, ahead of the Trump campaign filing a complaint to the US federal electoral commission claiming there had been “interference” in the “form of apparent illegal foreign national contributions made by the Labour Party of the UK”.

Politics latest: Trump row over Labour ‘interference’

It references reports suggesting Labour strategists have been offering advice to Kamala Harris “about how to earn back disaffected voters and run a winning campaign from the centre left”.

The complaint also mentions a Telegraph report suggesting Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir’s new chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, his director of communications, “attended a convention in Chicago and met with Ms Harris’s campaign team”.

Ms Mattinson, who no longer works for Labour, said following the party’s landslide victory somebody she knew from the Progressive Policy Institute “got in touch with me…and said they would really like me to go over and share lessons learned with some of their colleagues in the Democrats”.

“I said, ‘fine’,” she added.

She said the thinktank funded that, including focus groups and polling “to understand who their hero voters were”.

“And that was what I did, that was what I took over there and shared with other Democratic organisations, with pollsters, with strategists on their side,” she said.

Ms Mattinson said nobody from her team saw anybody from the Harris campaign, “but we talked to people that are working with them”.

She and those with her went over in September, in the week of the first and only debate between Ms Harris and Mr Trump, “so they were all down in Pennsylvania doing the debate”.

The strategist added the Progressive Policy Institute “was set up to collaborate between like-minded parties around the world, and that’s what they do”.

She said she is worried about what the impact of a Trump victory could be. “I’m worried about what that means for centre left parties around the world.”

Sir Keir has insisted his relationship with Mr Trump has not been jeopardised following the accusations of interference by the former president’s campaign.

The prime minister said on Tuesday he had “established a good relationship” with Mr Trump and said Labour Party volunteers “have gone over pretty much every election” but “in their spare time”.

The Labour Party has insisted it is not funding the travel or accommodation for activists.

Federal election rules stipulate foreign volunteers cannot spend more than $1,000 (£770) helping candidates.

A Labour Party spokesman said: “It is common practice for campaigners of all political persuasions from around the world to volunteer in US elections.

“Where Labour activists take part, they do so at their own expense, in accordance with the laws and rules.”

Politics

Is Keir Starmer falling into a small boats trap?

Published

4 hours ago

August 12, 2025

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Is Keir Starmer falling into a small boats trap?

As a milestone is reached of 50,000 migrants crossing the Channel since he became prime minister, Keir Starmer finds himself in a familiar place – seemingly unable to either stop the boats, or escape talking about them.

Home Office data shows 50,271 people made the journey since the election last July, after 474 migrants arrived on Monday. This is around 13,000 higher than the comparable period the previous year.

Politics Live: Starmer hits unwanted small boat crossings milestone

Starmer has tweeted more than 10 times about this issue in the past week alone, more than any other.

On Monday he wrote on X: “If you come to this country illegally, you will face detention and return. If you come to this country and commit a crime, we will deport you as soon as possible.”

It could be a tweet by a politician of any party on the right – and many voters (and Labour MPs) will say it’s right that the prime minister is taking this issue seriously.

Illegal – or irregular – migration is a relatively small proportion of total migration. Net migration was down at 431,000 in 2024 which the OCED say is comparable to other high-income countries. But it is of course highly visible and politically charged.

Nigel Farage’s Reform party have had a busy few months campaigning on it, and the prime minister has been toughening up his language in response.

Shortly after the local elections in May in which Reform won hundreds of seats and took control of councils, Starmer made his speech in which he warned: “In a diverse nation like ours, without fair immigration rules, we risk becoming an island of strangers.”

It outraged some in his own party, and he later said he regretted that language.

But it was part of a speech which made clear that he wanted action – vowing to end “years of uncontrolled migration” in a way “that will finally take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics.”

It’s a long way from his early months as Labour leader in 2020 when he said: “We welcome migrants, we don’t scapegoat them.” Migration did not feature as one of his five missions for “change” at the general election.

The strategy by Starmer and his minister is to talk up forthcoming new measures – a crackdown on social media adverts by traffickers, returns of people without a right to be in the UK which are indeed higher than under the Conservatives, and last week, a “one in, one out” deal with France to send people back across the channel.

The government say some people have been detained, although it is not known when these returns will happen. Ministers are also still pointing the finger at the previous Conservative government – which found stopping the boats easy to say and hard to achieve.

Baroness Jacqui Smith, a former home secretary, said this morning: “I don’t think it was our fault that it was enabled to take root. We’ve taken our responsibility to work internationally, to change the law, to improve the way in which the asylum system works, to take through legislation to strengthen the powers that are available.

“The last government did none of those things and focused on gimmicks. And it’s because of that, that the crime behind this got embedded in the way which it did. And that won’t be solved overnight.”

But for a prime minister who appears to have come to this issue reluctantly, talking about it a lot – and suggesting he’ll be judged on whether he can tackle it – risks raising expectations.

Joe Twyman, of the pollsters Deltapoll said: “You cannot simply out-Farage Nigel Farage when it comes to the subject of immigration. In a sense, Labour is falling into precisely the same trap that the Conservatives fell into. They’re giving significant prominence to a subject where they don’t have much control”.

Starmer has avoided mentioning firm numbers on how many migrants his crackdown may stop, but as previous prime ministers have found with the difficult issue of controlling migration, if you ask to be judged on delivery, voters will do so.