Trump can barely recall Burnham’s name – but he’s still trying to control him

Donald Trump is not a politician known for his unimpeachable record of accuracy. So his claims that in his first phone call with Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister had told him that “he’s going to open up North Sea oil” raised some eyebrows. Trump made his approval of that apparent decision very clear: “If he does that, you’re going to be a wealthy country,” he said, making his desires and expectations crystal clear to anyone in Burnham’s inner circle who might be listening. Shorts The US President is also a man who tends to hear what he wants to hear and believe what he wants to believe – something all too obvious in his repeated statements promising that the Strait of Hormuz is open, or that the latest Iran peace deal is a permanent one. His assertions were even less reassuring than usual on this occasion, because he appeared to forget Burnham’s name on several occasions throughout his press conference, at one stage referring to him simply as “the new gentleman”. While the UK has certainly run through its fair share of prime ministers in recent years, if the President can’t recall the name of who he is talking to, can he really be trusted with the finer details of the conversation? It is by no means impossible that Burnham told Trump he intended to allow more drilling for North Sea oil. Selected leaks to media in the run-up to Burnham taking the premiership suggested he wanted to allow oil and gas production in the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields. But Trump may have been stampeding into a more sensitive political and legal situation than he realised – almost as if he is trying to bulldoze the new Prime Minister into doing what he wants, rather than just relaying what he said. The complication is this: Labour’s 2024 manifesto, which Burnham promised to honour, pledged not to approve any new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. However, Rosebank and Jackdaw have a potential loophole, because they had approval for drilling in 2024, only for this to be overturned in 2025 after a legal challenge by environmental groups. This gives Burnham wriggle room to allow new drilling, without technically violating the manifesto – but it also means that whatever decision he makes will face incredibly close scrutiny and potential legal challenges. Environmental protesters have been urging Burnham not to approve the Rosebank oil field and Jackdaw gas field (Photo: Denise Baker/Getty) The suggestion that the Prime Minister had skipped the process and promised the US President he would approve new drilling, for example, could be exactly the sort of thing to open the door to a new legal challenge. In short, Trump might have made it harder for Burnham to do something Trump really wants him to do. This might just be a case of wishful thinking on Trump’s part – especially as he kept complaining about how he’d tried to get Sir Keir Starmer to do exactly the same thing. “I could not get Starmer to use it,” Trump said. “It was incredible. Every oil company that I meet, and these are all big giants, every person that I know in the oil business said, ‘Please, could you open up the North Sea? Could you get them to open it?’ They’re dying to do it.” A US President would not usually concern himself overmuch with UK oil and gas production, an issue which has very little impact on the US itself. But Trump has often been preoccupied with UK energy, particularly around wind production. Trump may be trying to push Burnham into doing what he wants him to do, writes James Ball (Photo: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street) Trump complained, once again, about “windmills” during his Wednesday press conference, saying that “any time you see windmills, you see a failing country” because they are “all made in China”. Trump particularly hates the wind turbines that can be seen off the coast of his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, and has suggested he’d been told the new UK government would be taking them down. This is vanishingly unlikely given the UK is committed, in reality, to putting up many more of them. Trump rounded off his intervention into UK politics, at least for now, by decrying its immigration policy. “They’re coming from South America,” he told reporters, of immigrants. “They’re coming from different parts of Asia, and they’re invading Europe. I mean, they’re invading Europe. It’s an invasion, and the UK is a prime suspect.” Again, it seemed more as though Trump were trying to project messaging onto Burnham than identifying anything he might actually do. Burnham has kept Shabana Mahmood, home secretary under Starmer, in her post, and is unlikely to agree immigration to the UK constitutes an “invasion”. Trump was, in theory, telling the world what Burnham had said, or at least what he thought he’d heard. In reality, it felt more like he was using the media to tell Burnham what to do. In this regard, the US President might soon find “the new gentleman” as disappointing as his predecessor.