- Darroch warns Harris of campaign missteps
- Trump favored unless Harris fixes strategy
- Starmer urged to meet with Trump, build ties
A former British ambassador to Washington said on Sunday that Donald Trump would remain the “likelier winner” of the US presidential election on November 5 until Democratic contender Kamala Harris tackles significant flaws in her campaign.
Kim Darroch claims that, despite decisively outperforming Trump in last week’s televised head-to-head debate, Harris risks making two critical missteps in the campaign’s last weeks, implying that the former Republican president remains the favorite.
With Trump’s return to the White House on the horizon, Lord Darroch believes it is critical that the prime minister, Keir Starmer, who met with US President Joe Biden and other leading Democrats in Washington on Thursday, now seeks a meeting with Trump and his team before election day so that he can build relationships with both sides.
“It is critical that if Starmer meets one, he meets both,” writes Darroch in an article for the Observer. “It will be noticed and resented by the Trump team if he doesn’t.”
Darroch served as the UK ambassador to the United States from 2016 to 2019, when he resigned in response to leaked secret emails in which he criticized Trump’s administration as “clumsy and inept.” Darroch’s position became unsustainable after Boris Johnson, who was then competing for the Tory leadership to succeed Theresa May, refused to give the ambassador his full support.
Darroch, a respected figure in diplomatic circles on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Trump is now “a less formidable campaigner” than in 2016, “down on energy, more prone to becoming confused, with a mind cluttered with grievances.” And he remains policy-free.”
“But,” writes the reporter, “he is still capable of connecting with the ‘left behind’ to a level few others can match, a talent which ensures a devoted and enduring support base in a country where one in three workers say they live paycheck to paycheck.”
Darroch contends that the Democratic campaign is in danger of committing two critical blunders. Darroch urges Harris to be “laser-focused” on voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which Biden won in 2020, warning that they may return to Trump unless Harris can offer “some crisply worded, specific, targeted policies to bring jobs and hope back to these blighted neighborhoods.”
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The second issue is that Harris is avoiding the media, which is a mistake Hillary Clinton made. “In 2016, Trump was ever-present. He would accept any invitations. He would even call the morning news shows unexpectedly to provide his thoughts on the day’s events. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, barred the media from covering her campaign.
He claims Harris “seems to have adopted the Clinton playbook.”
According to Darroch, the UK embassy in Washington would undoubtedly advise Starmer to try to meet with Trump, possibly taking time away from a UN general assembly meeting this week.
There is much to discuss with him, beginning with his opinions on Ukraine. And, no matter how poorly Trump did in the debate or how evident his collapse was, he remains the most likely winner for many of us.” Deborah Mattinson, Starmer’s former pollster, met with Harris’ campaign staff in Washington last week to discuss how Labour won the election by targeting key groups of “squeezed working-class voters who wanted change,” establishing ties with the Democratic side.
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