Donald Trump has shared his first thoughts on Andy Burnham, a man he dubbed the “mayor of a town” and “extremely liberal”.
With the revolving door of prime ministers at No 10 back in full swing, some might forgive famously not the sharpest tool in the box Donald Trump for not knowing who Andy Burnham is.
And, to be fair, with six prime ministers in the last 10 years, it is hard to keep up.
After Keir Starmer stepped down as prime minister on Monday, it is more than likely that former Mayor of Manchester and Makerfield MP Andy Burnham will be his replacement.
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And with this potential new leader comes lots of new interest in what those who will be working alongside Burnham on the world stage think of him.
Well, while having a meeting with Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte, one reporter at the White House was keen to get the US president’s thoughts on ‘King of the North’ Andy Burnham.
Starting his little monologue in the most self-representative way possible, Trump said: “I don’t know anything”.
He added: “I see he was the mayor of a town, I hear that he’s extremely liberal, extremely.”
However, Trump didn’t dwell on Burnham for long, showing his true interests as he derailed the topic of conversation to Keir Starmer and North Sea oil without provocation.
“So that means he probably won’t open up the North Sea,” Trump diverged.
“I gave Keir Starmer some pretty good advice, I said ‘open up the North Sea go to Aberdeen’ which was the hottest city on the whole continent. It was the oil city, it was the oil of Europe.
“And they closed everything, it was terrible I saw it before my own eyes. I couldn’t believe it,” Trump bumbled on with Rutte sat quietly next to him, expressionless in a way that you would be when a stranger starts ranting away at you at the pub.
Trump even went on to claim he had the inside scoop on Starmer resigning.
He said: “I told this guy 15 times [about the North Sea].
“You’re going to lose your prime ministership, and he did.
“In fact I called it about three days early, remember I said he was leaving.
“I wonder if that nudged him out.”
“The North Sea is loaded, I have had every oil company come to see me, ‘sir could you give us access to the UK, we would do anything to drill in the North Sea’, and they haven’t even found what’s there.
“The amazing thing is they buy their oil form Norway which get their oil from the North Sea and they pay a big premium.
“Norway has now two trillion dollars in the bank and the UK is dying.
“So they should open up the North Sea and a lot of good things would happen. It’s one of the greatest fields in the world.”
Of course, while Trump may always think he’s right, there’s a lot more nuance to this topic than meets the eye as, in reality, the largest reserves have already been depleted and these days its actually cheaper to produce renewable electricity in many circumstances.
As for Burnham, Trump didn’t really give away much more, but if there’s one mayor to take inspiration from it would be Mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani.
Initially Trump held him in discontent and branded Mamdani a “communist”, but now they seem to have a somewhat functional relationship, even calling him “charming”.
So, you never know, Burnham could just win over Trump after all, it just depends how much he intends on pandering to him.