Burnham to U-turn on Starmer’s Trump ‘flattery’ tactic

Meeting Donald Trump for the first time has become a right of passage for many a new world leader, and Andy Burnham is no exception. The Prime Minister – initially dismissed by Trump as a “mayor of a town” – is expected to meet the US President for the first time in New York on Tuesday. And like those who have gone before him, that first meeting is laced with opportunity and danger. As such Burnham and his team will have spent days prepping, aiming to walk the line between firmness and being himself and caution – not to antagonise a man who spreads trade tariffs like confetti. One immediate issue for Burnham in trying to win over a notoriously fickle and unpredictable President is that he is not Sir Keir Starmer. Shorts Starmer began strongly with Trump – pulling off a coup of political theatre by presenting him with a letter from the King at their first meeting. But by the end of Starmer’s term Trump had taken to publicly berating the then prime minister, particularly over North Sea oil. Nevertheless, such is the unpredictability of the President, he seemed to have retained a personal regard for the former Labour leader. When Trump met Starmer for the final time, he told the prime minister weeks after he announced his resignation that he wanted to “bring him back” and make him “great again”. Burnham a ‘usurper’ The extraordinary intervention, revealed by people familiar with the discussions, came when Trump met Starmer at the Nato summit in Ankara, while Starmer was serving out his final weeks in Downing Street and Burnham waited in the wings. Trump and Burnham are likely to put that, as well as past barbs aimed at each other, to one side as the Prime Minister faces Western diplomacy’s equivalent of a baptism of fire. But the President’s remarks were a testament to the personal relationship Starmer had fostered with Trump, which, despite growing tensions towards the end of the Labour leader’s time in No 10, helped win vital concessions on trade, and helped keep the President at least partly onside on Ukraine. It also means Burnham could be seen by Trump as a “usurper”, according to one Labour MP. Trump is expected to meet Burnham at the UN General Assembly in New York City next week, with talks expected on Tuesday. The President’s first public reaction to Burnham was hardly affectionate. Asked about him in June, he appeared unsure who he was, describing him as “the mayor of a town” and saying he had heard he was “extremely liberal”. But when the two men subsequently spoke by phone, the tone was very different. Their first conversation was described as “extremely warm”, and they have since spoken again about Ukraine, the Middle East and energy. Burnham is nevertheless expected to abandon Starmer’s “grand flattery” of Trump in favour of a “friendly but firm” approach, according to top ex-diplomats, former No 10 insiders and foreign affairs experts. The Prime Minister’s approach is likely to reflect the UK’s subtle shift away from the US and towards coalitions with middle powers, exemplified by sanctions on illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, which were co-ordinated with France and Canada. However, all eyes will inevitably be on the personal interaction between the wildly unpredictable Trump and Burnham, who has said previously he would “say what I feel” to the President. Downing Street is understood to be keen to maintain the UK’s privileged position on trade tariffs and tech with the US, while a No 10 source said the Prime Minister has already held “positive” phone calls while pointing out he is “good at building relationships”. Burnham must ‘expect the unexpected’ James Lyons, Starmer’s former director of strategic communications, had a front row seat of the former prime minister’s dealings with Trump, including listening into a phone call in which the President was reported by The Times to have become “fixated on the number of birds dying after flying into wind turbines in the US”, joking that the coyotes that eat the winged victims were becoming so fat they would need Ozempic. Sir Keir Starmer started off very well with the US President when he handed him an invitation from King Charles for an unprecedented second state visit to the UK during their first meeting in February 2025 (Photo: Carl Court /Getty) “The one thing Andy Burnham should do is expect the unexpected,” Lyons, now senior partner at Penta Group consulting, said. “Look at what’s happened to [Italian Prime Minister Giorgia] Meloni, who was the Trump whisperer in Europe, and then they had a spectacular falling out after the President claimed she begged for a picture with him,” Lyons said. “So it doesn’t matter who you are or how well you’ve been getting on with him, it’s always a rollercoaster ride.” “I’m sure that it hasn’t gone unnoticed by Andy Burnham and his team that two centre-left leaders – Anthony Albanese and Mark Carney – won unexpected victories off the back of positioning themselves against Donald Trump.” The Prime Minister is also expected to make support for Ukraine a major focus of his trip. The i Paper understands that plans are being discussed for a joint event with Burnham, French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky as Ukraine pushes for the delivery of more US Patriot missiles to defend itself from Russian aerial bombardment. Although sources close to Kyiv said there were “no plans for that so far”. But Burnham’s meeting with Trump is likely to range far more widely, with the UK likely to want to discuss stalled tariff and trade deals, and avoid what Chatham House called the “minefield” of some of Trump’s fixations such as North Sea oil, or areas of tension such as Iran or defence spending. ‘Friendly but firm is better than flattery’ A former British ambassador to Washington DC, Sir Peter Westmacott, said Burnham would be consulting widely on people who have previously met Trump “about everything from handshakes to what to say and not to say in front of the cameras”. Due to Trump’s aversion to detailed briefs, the success of the meeting “will turn on personal chemistry and how their exchanges go on issues that matter to the President, or have caught his attention that morning”. “I do not expect a repeat of Starmer’s grand flattery approach, with a personal letter from the King,” he added. “That’s a card that can’t be played twice.” Lord Ricketts, former British ambassador to France and ex-national security adviser, said Burnham must “present his agenda in a way which emphasises what Trump has to gain too”. “He can present support to Ukraine in the face of increasingly reckless Russian attacks as a shared interest – the evidence of a Russian network planning assassinations in the US is useful here. “Equally, the UK leadership role in Nato and upping defence spending recognises the need for Europe to take more responsibility for their security. “Friendly but firm is better than flattery.” Burnham with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky in Kyiv last month during his first foreign visit as PM. They are likely to push the US for more Patriot missiles to defend against Russian air strikes (Photo: Andrew Kravchenko/Getty) Burnham’s policy decisions, including slapping sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, also indicate a shift in approach, according to Chatham House UK in the World director, Olivia O’Sullivan. UK ministers and officials did spend weeks preparing the groundwork with the Trump administration over its plans to impose a trade ban on the settlements, it is understood. However, O’Sullivan said: “We are starting to see a pattern of the UK not necessarily declaring this, but just by its actions starting to build the muscle of forming coalitions with other nations without the US, and just diverging and testing where it’s possible to diverge and where it’s identifying a different strategic approach to some of these really difficult issues such as the Middle East conflict.” ‘Careless moment can be very consequential’ Burnham may use flattery in the “short term”, simply to smooth over his first interaction with Trump where “the odd careless comment or the prospect of having a difficult interaction can be very consequential”, she said. But “it should not in my view be the basis of the overall strategy for dealing with him”, particularly as aspects of the trade carve-outs won by Starmer have not actually been implemented, including on steel and aluminium quotas. O’Sullivan added: “The overall strategy should be more than just flattery. We’ve tried that, we’ve deployed that somewhat successfully but there is more and I imagine is a lot more thought that needs to go into it, especially at this point where [a] tariff deal, trade deal, some of these things were secured but some aspects have stalled.” Labour MP Clive Lewis, a critic of “hyper-Atlanticism” under Starmer, warned that Trump may not take so kindly to Burnham and could use his lack of a mandate from voters against him. “He walks in there as a usurper from Trump’s point of view. He doesn’t have a mandate – he has the mandate of around 400 Labour MPs. Trump will be briefed and aware of that, [thinking] this guy took out Starmer, he hasn’t won an election yet, he’s untested – and he [Trump] will make the most of that.” Steve Yemm, a Labour MP who sits on the British American parliamentary group, said he was “100 per cent confident” in Burnham but also urged a firmer message to be “clear and direct about British jobs, investment, security and our own national priorities”.