LONDON — Andy Burnham once said he would refuse to meet Donald Trump.
Now Britain’s prime minister is about to hold his first meeting with the U.S. president, with Ukraine and the soaring cost of conflict in the Middle East at the top of his agenda.
U.S. officials say the two leaders will hold talks on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Burnham is set to address the annual gathering of world leaders on Tuesday, setting out his vision of Britain's place in an increasingly fractured world order.
Burnham's only other foreign trip since taking office in July was to Kyiv, and he has said he will urge Trump to send interceptor missiles to bolster Ukraine's air defenses ahead of another winter of war.
The British government also wants to discuss ways to restore free movement of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, largely blocked since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran in February. The closure of the key route has sent oil prices spiking, complicating Burnham's efforts to jump-start Britain's sluggish economy and ease the cost of living.
Burnham says he'll seek common ground
Like many Labour Party politicians, Burnham was strongly critical of Trump in the past. In 2017 Burnham, as the mayor of Greater Manchester, said the president wouldn’t be welcome in the city. Two years later he said he would refuse to meet Trump if he visited.
After becoming prime minister in July, Burnham said he always tries to find “common ground” with other politicians.
Burnham and Trump have spoken twice since Burnham replaced Keir Starmer at the helm of the center-left governing party. Trump has called Burnham "a nice guy," but has also recently needled U.K. officials by expressing support for Irish unification and musing about the future of the Falkland Islands that are claimed by both Britain and Argentina.
Labour Party chairwoman Bridget Phillipson said Burnham would be “pragmatic.”
“We won’t agree with the U.S. administration on everything,” Phillipson told Times Radio on Sunday. "We are from different political traditions, we have different approaches. But maintaining that relationship is critical for our national interest and I know that that’s the approach Andy Burnham will always take, putting our country first.”
Starmer went out of his way to flatter Trump, presenting him in the Oval Office in February 2025 with an invitation from King Charles III for an unprecedented second state visit to the U.K.
British officials felt Starmer's approach was vindicated when the U.K. struck a trade deal with the Trump administration. But Trump soured on Starmer over his refusal to join the Iran war. The president also has repeatedly criticized the U.K.'s immigration and green-energy policies, urging the country to open more of the North Sea up to oil drilling.
Burnham is expected to announce a decision soon about whether to approve new oil and gas fields off Scotland.
U.K. officials also are braced for criticism of Britain's ban on trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and efforts to regulate big American technology firms.
"Burnham has a bit of a tightrope to walk," said Olivia O'Sullivan, director of the U.K. in the World program at the Chatham House think tank.
"He’ll want to build rapport. He’ll want to impress upon Trump and the U.S. administration the European line on Ukraine and the need for continued support to Ukraine. And he’ll probably want to use the rest of his time at the U.N. General Assembly to highlight the U.K. government’s ongoing concerns about Gaza” and Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
“But he’ll want to avoid that becoming a bone of contention with the U.S. government,” she said.
Middle powers look to build stronger alliances
Trump's threats to seize Greenland alarmed the U.K. and other European allies earlier this year, and Burnham was among leaders expressing relief at the announcement of a deal between Greenland, Denmark and the U.S. to bolster the American military presence there but keep the Arctic island under Danish control.
Trump has other, more high-profile, international meetings this week, including one at the White House with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Burnham's trip comes as middle-sized powers, led most vocally by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, try to forge closer alliances in the face of Trump's "America first" foreign policy. Burnham's government wants Britain to be bolder on the world stage, and to restore some of the ties with Europe severed when the U.K. left the European Union in 2020.
Ed Davey, leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, urged Burnham to “do what the Europeans are doing, what the Canadians are doing, and start saying to Donald Trump, ‘the way you’re treating our country, the way you’re treating the world, is not acceptable.’”
“I want him to stand up to Trump. It’s really clear that’s the only language the president respects,” Davey said.
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