Trump says Burnham is ‘extremely liberal’

Donald Trump has described Andy Burnham as “extremely liberal” in his first public comments about the front-runner to be Britain’s next prime minister.

Asked whether he wanted to be the first world leader to meet Mr Burnham should he become Prime Minister, he added: “No, but I think we’re probably of a different persuasion.”

The US president admitted knowing little about Sir Keir Starmer’s heir apparent, simply describing him as “mayor of a town” and stating that he probably would not drill in the North Sea.

“I don’t know anything. I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town. I hear he’s extremely liberal,” Mr Trump said when asked what he knew about Mr Burnham.

“So that means he probably won’t open up the North Sea. The amazing thing is they buy their oil from Norway, which gets the oil from the North Sea. Think of it, and they pay a big premium. Norway’s got now $2tn (£1.5tn) in the bank, and the UK is dying.”

Mr Burnham faces an uphill battle to win over the president and repair the special relationship, which has frayed like never before over freedom of speech, immigration and defence spending.

A source close to the president said that Mr Burnham was so unknown to the White House that officials “could not pick him out of a police lineup”.

Before he resigned, Mr Trump repeatedly attacked Sir Keir for blocking him from using Diego Garcia, the UK-US military base on the Chagos Islands, to carry out strikes on Iran at the beginning of the war.

Since then, he has launched repeated attacks against Sir Keir, saying he was “no Winston Churchill” and that he was responsible for the decline of the special relationship.

Before his resignation on Monday, Mr Trump said Sir Keir had “failed badly” on immigration and energy policy.

“I told this guy 15 times, and he wouldn’t do it, I said, you’re going to lose your prime ministership, and he did. In fact, I called it about three days earlier, right? Remember, I said he was leaving. I wonder if that nudged him out,” Mr Trump added.

Rutte tries to keep Trump onside

Mr Trump made the comments during a meeting with Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, on Wednesday. Mr Rutte arrived at the White House hoping to ease Mr Trump’s tensions over frustration with the alliance before the summit in Turkey.

Mr Trump has long been critical of Nato, arguing that its member countries unfairly rely on the US for military protection.

But his grievances have been louder since the Iran war began on Feb 28, especially after some member states ignored his call to help restart the oil trade through the shuttered Strait of Hormuz.

In April, infuriated by the lack of support, he told The Telegraph that pulling the US out of Nato was “beyond reconsideration”, raising the prospect that the alliance could be on the verge of collapse for the first time.

Armed with placards depicting a defence boom since Mr Trump’s push to increase defence spending to 5 per cent, Mr Rutte showered the president and his decision to go to war with Iran with praise.

“This is the leader of the free world taking responsibility beyond the shores of the United States for the rest of the world, and this is what you did,” Mr Rutte said.

Earlier, the leaders of five big European Nato allies – Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Poland – met in Berlin to prepare for next month’s summit in Ankara, and Mr Rutte joined them remotely.

Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said in remarks to reporters that the Ankara summit also should send the message that “we will do our part when the conditions are in place” to support an Iran peace deal.

Emmanuel Macron said: “We are in a moment of reconvergence between the Europeans and the Americans,” and indicated that he hoped that would continue at the summit.

A chief part of Mr Rutte’s mission these days is keeping the US in Nato, and he’s proven himself adept in the past at subduing Mr Trump’s frustrations.

Mr Rutte frequently flatters the president, crediting him with getting Nato members to increase their defence spending. The lengths to which Mr Rutte is willing to praise Mr Trump have at times raised eyebrows, such as when he referred to the president as “daddy”.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]