Vice President Kamala Harris is bringing in Deborah Mattinson, a top advisor to the U.K.’s Labour Party, to help advise her campaign in its final weeks, according to Politico.
Mattinson, a top adviser to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, is set to travel to Washington, D.C. next week for meetings with Harris-Walz campaign strategists, according to Politico. Mattinson will brief the strategists on how Starmer and the Labour Party, a left-wing party affiliated with the Party of European Socialists, secured the prime minister seat in July, the outlet reported. (RELATED: Harris Attempt To Attack Trump’s Arlington Visit Backfires Horribly When Gold Star Families Respond)
Mattinson wants to put the “‘hope and change stuff’ to one side” and keep Harris focused on appealing to undecided swing state voters, a former colleague who worked alongside Mattinson on Labour’s campaign told Politico.
Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event at IBEW Local Union #5 on September 02, 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Mattinson is not the only Starmer aide to meet with Harris’s team, Politico reported. Some of Starmer’s closest aides, including his head of political strategy Morgan McSweeney and communications director Matthew Doyle, made a trip to the Democratic National Convention where they met with Harris’s team, according to the outlet.
As Harris reportedly looks to lean on the European socialists for advice, the vice president has yet to define her policy platform and participate in many unscripted moments. More than a month into her presidential campaign, Harris’s campaign has yet to post a policy platform on its website. By contrast, the Trump campaign features the Republican National Committee’s platform as its own.
The vice president did put forth one policy platform on Aug. 16, which included her economic policy. Harris also said she is for “no tax on tips,” a prominent campaign message first adopted by the Trump campaign.
Anonymous campaign aides have moved to reverse the vice president’s previous stances on a series of issues. The vice president previously endorsed a ban on fracking, supported mandatory federal gun buybacks and the abolition of private health insurance during her 2019 run for the White House. Since hitting the 2024 presidential campaign trail, her aides claim that Harris supports a ban on assault weapons without requiring owners to sell them to the federal government, doesn’t want to ban fracking and no longer wants a single-payer health care system according to The New York Times.
The vice president skipped around questions on her aides flip-flopping during her first sit-down interview with CNN.
“Generally speaking, how should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made that you explained some of here in your policy? Is it because you have more experience now and you’ve learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary, and should they feel comfortable that what you’re saying now is going to be your policy moving forward?” CNN’s Dana Bash asked.
“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is that my values have not changed,” Harris began.
“You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time. We did that with the inflation Reduction Act. We have set goals for the United States of America, and by extension, the globe around when we should meet certain standards for reducing house gas emissions, as an example, that value has not changed,” she continued.
Read the full article here
