New British PM’s plan for dealing with Trump: ‘Meeting him where he’s at’

President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Friday, July 17, 2026. Trump is broadly unpopular among Britain’s public, which gives Prime Minister Andy Burnham the space to potentially stand up to the American leader if he wants to. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Andy Burnham, who became Britain’s prime minister Monday, has shrugged off the challenge of dealing with President Donald 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, Burnham’s predecessor, famously fawned over the U.S. president in early 2025, hoping to avoid the consequences of Trump’s angry outbursts, often directed at allies. Many Britons still remember the image of Starmer bending down to pick up papers that the president had dropped at a Group of 7 summit.

Stroking Trump’s ego only goes so far, and the president eventually imposed tariffs on Britain anyway. And when Starmer refused the president’s request to use British bases to launch attacks at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, Trump lashed out repeatedly at Starmer, calling him weak and a coward.

Burnham, who is often described as an effective political communicator, told 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 Burnham to go out of his way to antagonize Trump, who remains the leader of the country’s most important national security ally and its richest trading partner.

But Trump is broadly unpopular among Britain’s public, which gives Burnham the space to potentially stand up to the U.S. leader if he wants to. When Starmer refused to let the United States use the British bases, the president was furious, but Starmer’s popularity at home ticked up.

For his part, Trump initially professed not to know too much about Burnham.

“I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town,” 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 Burnham have said he may make an announcement on North Sea drilling in his first days 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 Burnham, said in a BBC interview Sunday that he would take “a more pragmatic approach” to North Sea gas and oil than Starmer, but added: “I don’t think it is a change of policy, more a change of emphasis.”

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!”

Downing Street said Monday that Burnham spoke to Trump shortly after becoming prime minister. According to a readout of the call released by Downing Street, the two talked about the Middle East, and Burnham invited Trump to visit Manchester. 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 U.N. General Assembly in September.