President Donald Trump is set to meet British Prime Minister Andy Burnham for the first time today, in a bilateral sit-down on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, according to the president’s schedule.
The meeting, which could run as long as 45 minutes, comes just two months after Burnham took the top job in British politics in July — a transition that, as Breitbart News has reported, came about via a palace coup against then-leader Sir Keir Starmer, vaulting the former Labour mayor of Manchester into 10 Downing Street.
It also comes after years of pointed criticism from Burnham directed at the American president, remarks that British diplomats now appear to be quietly working around as the two governments seek to keep the transatlantic relationship on an even keel.
A history of harsh words
The British prime minister’s past comments about Trump are unusually blunt for a sitting head of government about to sit across a table from him.
In 2017, while serving as mayor of Manchester, Burnham said he would refuse to meet Trump at all on principle, describing the president’s politics as “hateful, extremist.” At the time, he called on the British government to block Trump from travelling to the United Kingdom, arguing that the American leader’s “extreme views” ran counter to “the values that people here stand for.”
He returned to the subject in 2021, saying that “any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now.”
And as recently as this summer, according to the BBC, Burnham characterized American politics as “poisonous” while he was running in the parliamentary election that would make him eligible to become prime minister.
An immediate U-turn
Since entering office, Burnham has shifted course on the question of Trump’s presence in Britain. On Monday, in his first call with the president, he invited Trump to visit Manchester next year — reversing his earlier push as mayor to keep Trump out of the city.
The invitation suggests the damage-control effort is already well underway, with British officials working to ensure that personal antipathy within the Westminster political class does not derail relations between London and Washington.
Little so far distinguishes Burnham from his predecessor on policy, and the same may be said of his government’s private posture toward the American president. National interest and simple realpolitik, as Breitbart News has noted, demand a best-foot-forward approach. But like Starmer’s cabinet before it, Burnham’s team carries its own history of intemperate remarks about Trump — and the new prime minister, on a personal level, appears to have gone further than his predecessor did.
The policy gap
Whether the two leaders can find meaningful common ground remains an open question.
When Trump talks about Britain, he tends to return to a small set of issues he argues could produce outsized improvements in British quality of life at relatively little cost. Chief among them are mass migration and the country’s untapped natural energy resources.
The president made his case on energy directly to the British government in April, writing: “Europe is desperate for Energy, and yet the United Kingdom refuses to open North Sea Oil, one of the greatest fields in the World. Tragic.”
Trump went on to note that Aberdeen — the Scottish port closest to the North Sea oil and gas fields, once among the wealthiest cities in the world — “should be booming” from the oil trade. He added that Norway sells its North Sea oil to the UK at double the price while making a fortune, and concluded that Britain, better positioned than Norway on the North Sea, “should, DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!!”
The president has called it “absolutely crazy” that the UK insists on importing energy at some of the highest prices in the world.
Starmer’s response to such suggestions — which he opposed on ideological grounds — was, at best, awkward embarrassment and polite disregard. How Burnham would handle being publicly confronted with the same advice is unclear. There is scant evidence his views differ substantially from Starmer’s.
There was, at the very start of his leadership, some belief that Burnham might relax net-zero rules to permit new drilling in the North Sea and ease Britain’s dependence on costly imports. That talk has since gone quiet.
No clash expected
Anyone anticipating a dramatic confrontation between the two men may come away disappointed.
Despite Starmer’s evident dislike for Trump during his time in office, the American president consistently went out of his way to note that — however different the two men were politically — he found the former prime minister a “lovely man” with a “beautiful wife.”
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2026/09/22/anti-trump-british-pm-to-meet-president-for-first-time-after-branding-u-s-leader-hateful-extremist/