Oh dear. As Britain’s election campaigns draw to a close, Sir Keir Starmer has found himself under scrutiny at the eleventh hour. A Telegraph article about his “pragmatic” approach to US relations that states Labour has been talking to Donald Trump’s team on a “daily basis” has been slammed as “fake news” — by none other than top GOP strategist and Trump’s own campaign manager himself. Oo er.

The Telegraph piece states that “staff working for David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, have been in near-constant talks with Trump’s team for weeks, since he met the former president’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita in Washington in May.”

Sign up for Cockburn’s gossip column

Mischief, mayhem and Washington gossip from The Spectator’s intrepid beat reporter.

But Chris LaCivita took to Twitter on Tuesday night to blast Labour’s claims that the party has been in regular discussions with Trump, writing: “FAKE news apparently on the other side of the pond as well. Other than a ten min perfunctory meeting there is no contact.” Talk about being shot down…

Sir Keir’s lot are expected to see victory on July 5 and the party has been preparing for what will come next — even if that means swiveling on the presidential candidate. Over recent years, senior Labour figures have been rather scathing about Trump, with Wes Streeting describing him on Twitter as an “odious, sad, little man” in 2017 and Lammy dubbing him a “woman-hating, Neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath” in 2018. Ouch.

But lately Starmer’s army has been putting its talent for U-turns to good use. Sir Keir said in May that his party would still work with Trump if he became president, despite his guilty verdicts in the hush money trial. Meanwhile Lammy suggested that he could find “common cause” with Trump, adding that as a “good Christian boy” and a “small-c conservative” he could see eye-to-eye with Republicans. How the tables turn…

They may be trying to cozy up to Trump already but it appears Labour’s top team still have work to do with his campaign team yet…

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.