Labour has made yet another misstep — and now Keir Starmer has a Trump problem

News analysis: The Trump debacle is the latest example of a Labour Party which is struggling with understanding the consequences of being in government, says political editor David Maddox

Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump are at loggerheads (Reuters/Getty)

There has been an ongoing joke in PMQs each week that Keir Starmer keeps forgetting who he is now, and calling Rishi Sunak “prime minister”.

But a slip of the tongue in parliamentary exchanges is very different to causing an international incident with Donald Trump - the man who may shortly be president of Britain’s leading ally country again.

This really is something Labour should have seen coming, given Trump has been claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him for the last four years. Someone should have said: “Remember January 6!”

In past elections, it has been normal for Labour members and politicians to be given time to go and help their sister party the Democrats. The same has been true about the Tories and their sister party, the Republicans.

Former President Trump has accused Labour of election interference (AP)

But what is different about this time is the way Labour appears to have telegraphed that it is sending scores of people over. It has appeared to be organised, rather than just simple volunteering.

In contrast, the Tories are much more split on Donald Trump - so far fewer of them will be in the US now.

But essentially, in making a big fuss about sending lots of activists to help Kamala Harris in the US election, Labour has been acting as if it is still an opposition party with nothing to lose.

When you are the governing party there are greater consequences to your actions - as the freebies scandal has already proven. It is worth noting that many of Starmers £107,000 of freebies were accepted while he was leader of the opposition and nobody cared until he took power.

The whole story of Labour’s shambolic start to government is the fact it has struggled to adapt to the weight of its new responsibilities and the change in status.

Now Starmer is at loggerheads with Trump, and if Trump wins the US election it could have an impact on the special relationship for the next four years.

Prime minister Sir Keir has played down the row (PA Wire)

Added to that, if Labour is shown to be facilitating sending people over to help Harris then the prime minister will be open to accusations of election interference.

The age-old questions of “What would we think if the Republicans did this in the UK?” or “What would we say if the Tories did this?” once again do not seem to have occurred to Sir Keir or his top team in the Labour Party.

Their indignation at Trump’s bombastic accusations may be genuinely felt, not least because the crossover of political help across the Atlantic is long established. But Trump is no ordinary politician. He will always use anything at hand as a means to attack. It is not like this was a surprise, and they should have known it would happen.

The pity is that Labour had put in some good work building stronger relations with Trump and his team over the previous year. David Lammy had met with senior figures and Starmer just recently met Trump. Now all that seems to have gone to waste.

Now Labour’s chips are all in on the table for a knife-edge election. If Harris wins they will have a grateful ally and administration with which they are ideologically aligned. If Trump wins they will have an antagonistic administration in the White House bearing a grudge, and believing they have a free pass to help Nigel Farage in the UK.

There is a darker consequence, too. If Trump loses, Starmer and Labour will have helped legitimise in the minds of Trump and his MAGA supporters that this election was stolen again. The consequences of that could be dire.

The moral of the tale is that Sir Keir and Labour need to quickly understand what it means to be in government, then this trail of missteps and mishaps might stop.