LONDON: The UK government on Wednesday played down claims of meddling in the US election, after Donald Trump`s team accused British Prime Minister Keir Starmer`s party of `blatant foreign interference` in the election pointing out that Labour Party members travelled to help Kamala Harris`s campaign.

Trump`s legal team filed an official complaint to the US Federal Election Commission, alleging that the `British Labour Party made, and the (Kamala) Harriscampaign accepted, illegal foreign national contributions`.

The submission cited media reports that Labour officials, including the prime minister`s new chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, travelled to the United States to advise the Democratic party campaign.

They also included a now-deleted LinkedIn post by Labour director of operations Sofia Patel calling for volunteers to travel to North Carolina, and offering to `sort out your housing`.

Foreign nationals are allowed to volunteer in US elections but may not be compensated.

The claim from Trump`s team blew up as Starmer jetted to a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) on the Pacific island of Samoa,prompting a mid-air rebuttal.

`Volunteers go every polls` Starmer insisted it was normal for volunteers to campaign and that he had established `a good relationship` with Trump, whom he met for dinner over two hours at his Trump Tower residence in New York just last month.

`The Labour Party has volunteers who have gone over (to the United States) pretty much every election,` he told reporters travelling with him. `They`re doing it in their spare time, they`re doing it as volunteers, they`re staying, I think, with other volunteers over there. That`s what they`ve done in previous elections, that`s what they`re doing in this election and that`s really straightforward.

Starmer denied suggestionsthat it could damage relations with the UK`s most important ally should Republican party candidate Trump beat Harris and secure a return to the White House after next month`s vote.

Other senior Labour ministers tried to smooth over any cracks.

Defence Secretary John Healey insisted any Labour members were helping in a `personal capacity` and that had no bearing on formal bilateral ties. `We will work with whoever the American people elects,` he told a joint news conference with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius in London.

But Healey an MP for more than 25 years indicated that Trump`s team was playing politics. `This (the filing to the FEC) is in the middle of an election campaign,` he noted.-AFP