‘Don’t mention the special relationship’: how should UK’s next PM handle Donald Trump? | Donald Trump

If, as expected, Andy Burnham becomes the British prime minister later this month, one of his first telephone calls is likely to be with Donald Trump.

Trump’s mother was Scottish and he has a nostalgic fascination with Britain. But managing a relationship with the erratic, transactional and demanding US president has been a diplomatic minefield for Burnham’s predecessors.

When Trump returned to power in January 2025, the current prime minister, Keir Starmer, pulled out all the stops to burnish the special relationship, inviting the president to an “unprecedented” second state visit to the UK during an all-smiles photocall at the Oval Office.

But their early bond soon soured over Trump’s threats to Greenland, denigration of British troops in Afghanistan and perception that Britain failed to support its war in Iran. “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with” became Trump’s go-to insult. And now, with Starmer having announced his resignation, Trump will encounter his fourth British prime minister in his five-and-a-half years in the White House.

Like most Americans, the US president appears to have never heard of Burnham, who was until recently the mayor of Greater Manchester, a region of 3 million people in north-west England where he has become known as the “king of the north”.

Asked recently what he knew about the incoming prime minister, Trump replied: “I don’t know, I think I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town. I hear he’s extremely liberal, extremely, so that means he probably won’t open up the North Sea.”

Burnham has held high office – heading up two big government departments under the Brown government in 2008 and 2009 – but the world has changed dramatically since then.

Burnham has previously warned about the “poisonous” nature of US-style politics and said Trump had brought “instability” to the world. Two weeks ago, in his victory speech after winning the election that set him on course for Downing Street, Burnham urged British voters to turn away from the path that “takes us to a divided, dark politics of the kind we see in the United States”.

How will he handle this erratic and transactional new era of transatlantic relations? Will he go on the charm offensive and play to the president’s ego? How will he respond if – or more likely when – Trump goes on the attack on social media? Can the special relationship be resurrected, or does the bond between presidents and prime ministers even matter any more?

‘Trump wishes to be seen as royalty’

In Washington, longtime watchers of the alliance do not expect a new face to make any difference. Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, warned: “Prime Minister Andy Burnham will be treated like other British prime ministers by Donald Trump. The special relationship has been replaced by the abusive relationship.

“He shouldn’t take it personally. Keir Starmer was treated abusively but so was Theresa May. Trump has very low esteem for British prime ministers and extreme deference to the King of England. Trump wishes to be seen as royalty and his idea of an equivalent is a king, not a prime minister.”

Burnham has near zero name-recognition in the US – but political strategists and foreign policy experts agreed this clean slate could be an asset.

Frank Luntz, a consultant and pollster who spends significant time in Britain, said: “They’ll probably think he’s a football star. No one in America is going to know who he is. But that’s an opportunity to start afresh.”

Larry Jacobs, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, added: “Burnham is as unknown a high-level British politician as we’ve seen in decades. From the man in the street to most people in Congress, he is a nobody.

“He’s a regional politician. He’s attracted attention from politicians who are, frankly, desperate to move on from Starmer, so this is not someone who’s established a reputation on the international level, who’s made important statements about domestic policy that would have travelled across the Atlantic.”

As the mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017, Burnham is out of practice when it comes to walking the tightrope of international diplomacy. For the past decade, his main opponents have been London’s obdurate civil servants and sometimes parochial town hall leaders in his corner of north-west England.

Nina Sawetz, a communications adviser who worked with Burnham’s mayoral team, said the incoming prime minister’s instinctive reaction to any Trump provocation would be to focus on “outcomes and interests for the UK, rather than compete on personalities”.

“My expectation is that Trump will initially interpret Burnham’s refusal to engage in a running public battle as a sign that he has the upper hand. I think that would be a misreading,” she added.

“The greater opportunity for the president lies in Burnham’s tendency to wear his frustrations on his sleeve more than many political leaders. That openness will reveal where the pressure points are, and I would expect Trump to test them repeatedly.”

How to navigate the notoriously mercurial, thin-skinned and volatile Trump? Many foreign leaders have been desperate to avoid the fate of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, who was berated by Trump in the Oval Office last year.

Jacobs said: “The starting point for dealing with Trump is to accept you’re dealing with an aberration, a highly unstable, erratic president who has very low self-esteem. If you do anything that kind of disrupts Trump’s sense of himself, the relationship is over.

“My advice to Burnham would be treat Donald Trump like a constituent back home who is poorly informed and quite emotional. How would you deal with that person?”

Burnham faces an uphill struggle since Trump has shown more interest in oil-rich Gulf Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar than traditional allies in his second term. For a Labour prime minister there are yawning policy gaps on every issue from climate and immigration to Iran and Nato.

But one intriguing blueprint is offered by another mayor: Zohran Mamdani of New York. A democratic socialist, he is ideologically opposed to Trump yet has got on well with the president, who appears to respect him as a charismatic populist – and a winner. Indeed, Trump consistently views diplomacy through a personal rather than policy lens.

Philippe Dickinson, deputy director of the transatlantic security initiative at the Atlantic Council thinktank in Washington, said: “Mamdani is obviously on a very different side of the political spectrum but his identity isn’t ‘I’m the anti-Trump guy’. It’s about his policy platform domestically in New York. For Andy Burnham, there are potentially some lessons there.”

Among them, Dickinson said, are the charm offensives by Mamdani and Mark Rutte, the secretary general of Nato. “It’s politicians who convey an aura of confidence and ease in their own skin and can present themselves as people who are eye-to-eye with Trump on certain things. They keep focusing on those certain things – even Mamdani can find those – and can present themselves as a net problem-solver for Trump.”

One clear commonality between Burnham and the US president is their shared view that for decades mainstream politics has not worked for ordinary people. Trump may find that he admires Burnham’s desire to shake up the staid and over-centralised British political establishment.

Sawetz, the communications adviser, said Trump’s approach had long been to “establish the power dynamic quickly, whether through public criticism, personal remarks or by goading new counterparts into a very public response”.

“Burnham won’t take that invitation,” she said. “He may brush off the occasional quip, but we know he doesn’t favour open political confrontation or the kind of prolonged exchanges we’ve seen with Sadiq Khan in London.”

Dickinson, of the Atlantic Council, suggests defence spending could be an early potential win for Burnham. “I don’t expect he will be coming to Washington any time soon but, when he does, he could come with a story to tell that says, this is my approach to defence investments and this is how it is helping solve a problem for you: we are going to go further on defence.”

Others believe Burnham should be prepared to cut deals. Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state, advised: “Burnham needs to come in with an agenda of what he needs from the US to advance his domestic goals, and to be ready to offer up tangible goodies to the US that will help Trump and the American people.”

Conversely, other experts warn that bowing to Trump would be a diplomatic failure and domestic suicide. Brendan Boyle, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, notes that “any leader who takes on Trump benefits domestically from doing so,” whereas if Burnham says “absurd, obsequious things in public, he would get absolutely hammered by his electorate”.

Richard Stengel, a former undersecretary of state in the Barack Obama administration, urges Burnham to maintain a distance and adopt a “tough love stance”. He cautioned: “First of all, I wouldn’t wear a red tie under any circumstances. A red tie signals that you’re lying down.

“That universal European response of kowtowing to him and sucking up to him just turns out to be a poor strategy. He turns on everybody so even if he forms an early ‘Oh, he’s my friend’, he’ll eventually turn on you. Burnham needs a certain distance.”

Stengel added: “I would no longer mention the special relationship. That is a dog that doesn’t hunt any more and Americans don’t get it and I don’t know if the Brits do and it also seems to someone like Trump like you’re being deferential.”

Some analysts point to Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, as the gold standard. Earlier this year Carney delivered a speech at Davos that did not mention Trump by name but declared that the US-led “rules-based international order” was facing a permanent rupture.

Steve Schmidt, a political strategist and former adviser to Senator John McCain, said: “There are many people who would look at the state of the world and hold the view that Mark Carney is the most serious and important leader in the English-speaking world and is the person who has most fundamentally and substantially understood Trump and drew a line that other world leaders have rallied around.”

Blumenthal, who introduced Clinton to Blair before the latter became prime minister, has some further advice based on November’s midterm elections. “Unlike Starmer, Burnham will very likely have at least one Democratic counterpoint in the Congress, either the House and/or the Senate to deal with.

“Burnham represents the parliament himself and he should deal with them extensively. If the Democrats get control of either house, they are his allies and they can help him in innumerable ways. His government should establish extensive relationships with a new Democratic Congress to the benefit of Britain. That did not exist for Starmer.”

The phrase “special relationship” was coined by Winston Churchill during a lecture tour of the US after the second world war. Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had been allies against Hitler, setting the bar for future double acts including Harold Macmillan and John F Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, Blair and Clinton, and Blair and George W Bush.

Gordon Brown had a less happy experience with Barack Obama, who was evidently more at ease with Angela Merkel of Germany. Brown tried five times to get a meeting with Obama on the fringes of the 2009 UN general assembly but was merely granted a “snatched conversation” in a New York kitchen.

Theresa May was the first foreign leader to meet Trump at the White House after his inauguration in 2017; he memorably took her hand to guide her down a ramp. But temperamentally the pair were chalk and cheese. Trump delivered a series of humiliations and, during a visit to Britain in 2018, criticised May’s handling of Brexit while musing that her rival Boris Johnson would make a “great prime minister”.

The president did indeed find a kindred spirit and personal chemistry when Johnson reached No 10, remarking: “They call him Britain’s Trump.”

While Starmer’s relationship with Trump started promisingly – with the prime minister memorably reaching into his jacket breast pocket and producing a letter from King Charles – it ended terribly. The question now is whether the “town mayor” from Manchester can repair this fractured alliance.