Tory leadership frontrunner Kemi Badenoch has launched a blistering attack on Keir Starmer’s “lack of statesmanship” as the transatlantic row between Labour and Donald Trump continued to blow up.
Sir Keir has denied accusations of “election interference” but Ms Badenoch accused him of being a “student politician” whose politics have “not evolved since he was a teen”.
Ms Badenoch was speaking exclusively to The Independent as the Trump campaign filed a legal complaint against Labour for “election interference”.
The Trump campaign has cited Sir Keir’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and director of communications Matthew Doyle, who attended the Democratic convention in Chicago.
The complaint also cited a now-deleted LinkedIn post from Sofia Patel, head of operations at the Labour Party, who wrote that “nearly 100” current and former Labour Party staff would be travelling to the US to help elect Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Ms Badenoch said the row proved that Sir Keir and his foreign secretary David Lammy are unable to act as statesmen on the international stage.
Already, sources in the Trump-Vance campaign have suggested that the intervention could be part of a wider legal action if the Republicans lose to Ms Harris on 5 November.
But Ms Badenoch took aim at the prime minister for being personally responsible for the diplomatic fallout.
“I have been saying for a long time that this Labour government is full of student politicians. The way they talk, the things they say, it’s as if they have not evolved since they were a teen.
“David Lammy, the foreign secretary, Keir Starmer, the prime minister, are on record as being very, very critical of president Trump.
“So I think that is the backdrop to what we have seen. If they behaved as statesmen, if they had been statesman-like and measured in their comments, then the actions of 100 or so Labour activists would not look so problematic.”
Ms Badenoch has been endorsed in her bid for the Tory leadership by former Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Australia’s former prime minister Tony Abbott, while there has been a long tradition of Tories as well as Labour activists going to the US and other western countries to campaign.
But Ms Badenoch said this was different and, as Tory leader, she would not personally be authorising large groups to go campaigning.
“It’s because of how Labour have behaved that this has become used. People do go abroad to help other people campaign, but it’s quite often a lot more subtle.
“So it’s, you know, one person going in because they have a friend. But then there’s the organising of big bands of people, which I think is unusual. It is worse, because of what Labour have been saying about our allies in the United States, they have not been statesmen-like or diplomatic.”
Ms Badenoch has said she will not endorse a candidate herself in this US election but expressed her admiration for Mr Trump, not least for his political stunt this week working in a McDonald’s, the restaurant chain which gave the Tory leadership hopeful her first job.
“I think that if the potential leader of a country, or former leader, is going to places like McDonald’s it is a good thing. It is showing that you understand that not everybody works in a high-flying corporate career or in a white-collar job.
“And it is signalling that you understand their lives. It is signalling that you understand their concerns.”
She turned her fire on the commentariat who mocked both Trump and her over McDonald’s, claiming that they “are the problem”.
“Anyone who is mocking that is the problem, and I had a lot of mocking when I said that I worked at McDonald’s. People who sneer at these jobs often don’t understand what others lives are like, and they don’t even understand how those jobs actually set a lot of people out for the future.
“I’m not the only politician who has worked at McDonald’s, and I did go back there when I was a minister, because I know what I learned there, and I’m proud of the experience that I got.”
While praising the former president, she made it clear that anyone who hopes to be a world leader should not be endorsing political nominees in other countries.
“I think that if you are somebody who is looking to be a world leader, looking to lead your country at some point, that you need to be very diplomatic.
“I learned this because when I was trade secretary, I had lots of complaints from other countries who said, ‘Why do you keep interfering?’ Not me personally, but people in the UK. ‘Why do you keep commenting like this that it’s not helpful. We’re all trying to do the right thing.’
“What I want to do is give myself a space to be able to work with whoever wins. So I’m not an American citizen. I’m not voting there. It’s for Americans to choose. I would be happy to work with whoever’s leader of the United States.”
You can see the full interview with Kemi Badenoch on Independent Television and read it on independent.co.uk later this week.