Andy Burnham, who is set to become Britain’s prime minister on Monday, has shrugged off the challenge of dealing with President Trump.
“It’s about being yourself, isn’t it?” he told Gary Lineker, the former England soccer player turned podcast presenter, in a video interview last week. “It’s about respecting the office, the relationship, the U.K.-U.S. relationship. Where you disagree, do it. But do it in a way that is kind of meeting him where he’s at.”
Others have found that more difficult than it sounds.
Keir Starmer, Mr. Burnham’s predecessor, famously fawned over the American president in early 2025, hoping to avoid the consequences of Mr. Trump’s angry outbursts, often directed at allies. Many Britons still remember the image of Mr. Starmer, bending down to pick up papers that the president had dropped at a G7 summit.
Stroking Mr. Trump’s ego only goes so far, and the president eventually imposed tariffs on Britain anyway. And when Mr. Starmer refused the president’s request to use British bases to launch attacks at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, Mr. Trump lashed out repeatedly at Mr. Starmer, calling him weak and a coward.
Mr. Burnham, who is often described as an effective political communicator, told Mr. Lineker that he had confidence in his ability to withstand the president’s larger-than-life persona.
“I like to think I’ve got some personality myself,” he said. “And I’ll just, you know, I’ll deal with him very upfront in the same way.”
Foreign policy officials in Britain do not expect a huge shift in the overall relationship between the United States and Britain. And they do not expect Mr. Burnham to go out of his way to antagonize Mr. Trump, who remains the leader of the country’s most important national security ally and its richest trading partner.
But Mr. Trump is broadly unpopular among Britain’s public, which gives Mr. Burnham the space to potentially stand up to the American leader if he wants to. When Mr. Starmer refused to let the United States use the British bases, the president was furious, but Mr. Starmer’s popularity at home ticked up.
For his part, Mr. Trump initially professed not to know too much about Mr. Burnham.
“I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town,” Mr. Trump said in comments to reporters in the Oval Office recently. “I hear he’s extremely liberal, extremely. So that means he probably won’t open up the North Sea” to allow more drilling for oil and gas, he said.
In fact, aides to Mr. Burnham have said that he may make an announcement on North Sea drilling on his first day in office, sending a signal to the president but also to the British public, who have been struggling in recent years with high energy prices. Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader and a close ally of Mr. Burnham, said in a BBC interview on Sunday that he would take “a more pragmatic approach” to North Sea gas and oil than Mr. Starmer, but added: “I don’t think it is a change of policy, more a change of emphasis.”
Mr. Trump appeared to welcome — and potentially exaggerate — the expected change, saying in a post on Truth Social on Sunday that people in the Scottish port city of Aberdeen “are dancing in the streets because the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has stated that he will be opening up, all the way, the invaluable North Sea Oil!”
Mr. Burnham has said he has not yet spoken directly to Mr. Trump. That is likely to happen in a phone call shortly after he becomes prime minister. And British officials are already thinking about when the first face-to-face meeting might happen, possibly on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in September.
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