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

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

Deborah Mattinson, who has also worked with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock, told political editor Beth Rigby on the Election Disorder Podcast She was asked in September by the centrist Democratic think tank Progressive Policy Institute to travel to the US to speak to Democrats about the Labor campaign.

She had already finished her work for the Labor Party when she went to the USA.

Ms Mattinson spoke on Tuesday – before the complaint was lodged.

She said someone she knew at the Progressive Policy Institute “reached out to me … and said they would really like me to come over and share the lessons learned with some of their Democratic colleagues.”

“I said ‘fine,'” she added.

She said the think tank funded this, including focus groups and surveys “to understand who their hero voters were.”

“And that’s what I did, I took that there and shared it with other Democratic organizations, with pollsters and strategists on their side,” she said.

Ms. Mattinson said no one on her team had seen anyone from the Harris campaign, “but we have spoken to people who work with them.”

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

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

Listen to the full podcast here.

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