Andy Burnham will not rush to love-bomb Donald Trump, instead taking a cooler approach than his predecessor Keir Starmer — a shift that could see him skip the UN General Assembly in September to focus on domestic politics and the Labour Party conference.
The anticipated successor to Starmer, who went out of his way to be Trump’s friend and whose premiership was ultimately doomed by his efforts to preserve a close White House relationship, is emerging gradually on the world stage. Burnham’s first opportunity to visit Washington will be the UN General Assembly in September, but he may choose not to attend, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“Andy Burnham signals cooler US approach, may skip UN assembly to focus on domestic agenda ahead of Labour conference.”
“I think there’s a recognition he and his team will focus on domestic politics first,” the official said. “It doesn’t feel like a ‘I must jet across to D.C. immediately’ tactic is imminent.”
Burnham sought to address this head-on in an op-ed in The Times on Wednesday, linking domestic and international agendas and pledging: “Our relationship with the U.S. will remain critical as our most important defence and security ally.” He did not expand much beyond that on the alliance with Washington, but said he wants “an even closer” relationship with Europe, adding to the sense that he will seek a level of continuity on security matters while emphasizing alternative trade relationships and a more strident approach to asserting Britain’s self-interest.
Senior observers — including Starmer himself — have warned that Burnham’s purported wish to focus on his domestic agenda above all else is not sustainable. “My own reflection is that you can’t divorce the international from the domestic,” Starmer said Wednesday, speaking from the NATO summit.
One of the only known pieces of Burnham’s diplomatic jigsaw so far is that he intends to keep Jonathan Powell as national security adviser, a choice widely greeted as signaling continuity in Downing Street’s relationship with the White House and the U.K.’s commitments on peace efforts in Ukraine and Iran.
Michael Martins, a former U.S. embassy official and founding partner at Overton Advisory, said: “Burnham can afford to find areas of strategic alignment, like leaning into the pro-business half of his pro-business socialism, and avoid picking fights he doesn’t need. There will be time enough to set out his stall for the left wing of the Labour Party.”
The question now is whether Burnham’s cooler approach can sustain the so-called Special Relationship without the personal courtship that defined Starmer’s tenure — and at what cost to Britain’s standing in Washington.