There’s something refreshing happening in British politics right now, and it involves Andy Burnham heading into a meeting with Donald Trump without a hint of grovelling in sight.
While Keir Starmer spent months bending over backwards to keep the US president happy, offering a second state visit almost before Trump had finished his first cup of tea at Windsor, Burnham is taking a very different approach. The Greater Manchester mayor once called Trump “poisonous” and he’s not pretending otherwise. No backtracking, no carefully worded non-apology, no spin doctor smoothing it all over. Just a bloke who said what he thought and is prepared to own it.
And here’s the thing. That might actually work better.
Starmer’s strategy of being endlessly accommodating got him precisely nowhere. He rolled out the full pomp and ceremony, the silver service, the marching bands, the whole spectacle. Trump took it all in, smiled politely, and then carried on doing exactly what he wanted anyway. The so-called special relationship kept getting invoked by the British side while the American side appeared barely aware it existed. When Trump made the decision to bomb Iran, Starmer looked genuinely blindsided, as if he’d believed all along that the warmth of those state visit handshakes actually meant something in Washington.
It was painful to watch. Not because Starmer is a bad person, but because the approach was built on a fundamental misreading of how Trump operates. Treating him like a traditional ally who responds to diplomatic niceties and carefully managed relationships was always going to fall flat. Trump respects strength, directness, and people who don’t seem desperate for his approval. Starmer, for all his qualities, came across as desperate.
Burnham is the opposite of desperate. He has a track record of fighting his corner loudly and publicly, whether that’s standing on the steps of a Manchester building demanding proper flood compensation, taking on the government over rail nationalisation, or yes, calling out Trump back when Trump was doing things worth calling out. He’s got form for saying uncomfortable things to powerful people and not losing sleep over it.
The argument that this makes him unsuitable to meet Trump actually misses the point entirely. Burnham has nothing to hide here. He said what he said, he meant it at the time, and the world has moved on. Walking into that room with that history is arguably more honest than the alternative, which would be pretending it never happened or offering some mealy-mouthed clarification about the “context” of his remarks.
Trump, whatever else you think of him, tends to have more time for people who push back than for those who fold immediately. He spent years publicly feuding with figures who later became close allies. The pattern is well established. Roll over and you get treated like a doormat. Give as good as you get and there’s at least a chance of being taken seriously.
None of this means Burnham is going to walk out of the meeting with some grand trade deal tucked under his arm or a personal pledge from the president to go easy on Manchester businesses hit by tariffs. The stakes here are realistic. But the approach at least gives him a fighting chance of being heard rather than just humoured.
Back in Westminster, the contrast with Starmer’s handling of the Trump relationship is becoming harder to ignore. The Prime Minister is in a difficult position, of course. He has to manage the whole UK-US relationship, not just one meeting, and the pressures on him are enormous. But the optics of watching a regional mayor walk into the same room with more apparent confidence and less visible anxiety tells its own story.
British politicians have tied themselves in knots trying to figure out how to handle Trump. Some, like Nigel Farage, have leaned into the relationship so hard it has defined them entirely. Others have kept their distance and paid a price for it in terms of access and influence. Burnham is doing something slightly different, which is just being himself and trusting that authenticity is worth something even in the most transactional of political environments.
Whether it pays off remains to be seen. But after months of watching Starmer look pained and powerless every time Trump did something unexpected, there is something genuinely refreshing about a British politician who walks into that particular lion’s den without needing anyone’s approval before he opens his mouth.