ONE of Keir Starmer’s top advisers met with Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign to brief them on Labour’s General Election strategy ahead of the US election.
In September, it was reported that adviser Deborah Mattinson travelled to Washington DC, where she met with strategists from the Harris-Walz campaign to share insight on Labour’s strategy for winning the General Election on July 4.
Harris has since lost the election to Donald Trump, who secured the 270 electoral votes needed to secure the presidency after taking the swing state of Wisconsin.
Mattinson is a polling veteran who served as Keir Starmer’s director of strategy for three years until the election, while Labour was in opposition.
During that time, she stressed the importance of winning back traditional Labour voters who had switched to the Tories under Boris Johnson.
Mattinson’s advice to the vice-president’s team was developed with the DC-based Progressive Policy Institute think tank, run by Starmer’s former director of policy Claire Ainsley.
One former colleague who worked alongside Mattinson on Labour’s campaign told Politico she wanted to “put the ‘hope and change stuff’ to one side” during her trip and maintain a ruthless focus on Harris’s appeal in swing states.
Mattinson is also known for her work with focus groups under former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Several of Starmer’s closest aides travelled to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention in August and met members of the vice president’s campaign team.
Morgan McSweeney – who was Labour’s campaign manager and now works as chief of staff at No 10, after Sue Gray took up a new position as “envoy” to the UK’s nations and regions – and Downing Street communications director Matthew Doyle were among those who made the trip, alongside a select group of loyal new MPs.
After the meeting, several Labour staff members travelled to the US to campaign for Harris, leading Elon Musk – the billionaire owner of social media platform Twitter/X – to accuse the party of breaking US election law.
Donald Trump reported the Labour Party to US federal election officials, arguing the party had interfered with the election.
We also told how Scottish LibDem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton also made the trip to the US, where he campaigned for Harris in Pennsylvania.
