From the start, it was obvious that Donald Trump wanted to be complimentary about the new British prime minister. He called him a “natural businessman”, which sounded like a mangled reflection back of Andy Burnham’s spiel about working with business as mayor of Greater Manchester.
The second question from the journalists was about immigration – an invitation to the president to repeat his view that the British government is mishandling the issue. Trump used it as a springboard to boast about his success in controlling illegal immigration into the United States. Burnham sounded a slightly Trumpian echo when he said the small boats were a “very big issue” but that people did not appreciate the progress that the government was making.
The journalists tried all the issues on which Trump might have criticised Burnham and he deflected them one by one. The war with Iran? We agreed that they cannot have a nuclear weapon, said Trump, and then boasted about his negotiating triumphs.
At one point he nearly veered off into criticising the British government – “some countries could have stepped forward” – but he veered back again, and anyway, that was Burnham’s predecessor.
Burnham dodged expressing a preference between Manchester and Manhattan. “Manchester, Makerfield, Manhattan, I like them all,” he said.
Burnham even turned a question about British sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank to his advantage, saying that he had condemned antisemitism very strongly. Trump ignored US opposition to the sanctions to agree emphatically that Burnham had been very strong in condemning antisemitism.
Even the Chagos deal – “I don’t support it,” Trump said bluntly – failed to turn the president against his new friend. Trump complained about the B2 bombers that attacked Iran having to come back to Missouri rather than go to Diego Garcia, because Keir Starmer wouldn’t allow the US base on British territory to be used for an “offensive” operation.
But Trump said that “the prime minister is going to look at that”, and Burnham agreed. Given that the deal cannot go ahead without US support, that seems to be only common sense – Burnham yesterday told the Mauritian prime minister that he was committed to “working with Mauritius and the US on a way forward”.
And that was it. The last questioner said that relations between America and Britain had been “up and down” recently. “Up” contradicted Trump. Relations were “up” with “your prime minister Andy”, he said. “I think we’re doing very well.”
It could hardly have gone better for “Andy”, although it was only two years ago that we were saying similar things about Trump’s warm words about “Keir”. Today Keir was in the bin, gestured to by Trump without naming him as the useless prime minister on whom Burnham was such a great improvement. Let the cycle begin again.
