The Trump-shaped problems awaiting Andy Burnham, ranked

LONDON — Andy Burnham spent most of his first 42 days as prime minister in his comfort zone, talking about jobs, living costs, homelessness and shifting power out of London.

Now he’s got to look beyond his own borders. As parliament returns from its six-week summer break on Tuesday, Britain’s new leader faces a towering in-tray of decisions that will affect his relations overseas, especially with Donald Trump.

British officials are preparing for the prospect of his first face-to-face meeting with the U.S. president in late September after Burnham confirmed his intention to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Downing Street is privately exploring the possibility that he visits the White House on the same trip, depending on Trump’s availability.

Burnham has played down the jeopardy, but he also promised to “say what I feel.” He has the advantage of having seen his predecessor Keir Starmer try to please Trump, only to be hectored relentlessly on Truth Social. Like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni or Canada’s Mark Carney, Burnham may sense a political advantage in not kissing the ring.

A visit will still tie him up in diplomacy, however; tricky for a man who wants to keep his focus at home rather than engaging in the geopolitical wrangling for which voters gave Starmer little credit. It will also come days before his first Labour conference as leader, where some of his party faithful oppose oil and gas drilling and want him to take a harder line against Israeli settlements.

POLITICO runs through a few of the Trump-shaped headaches awaiting Burnham, informed by conversations with more than a dozen U.K. government political aides, civil servants and ministers who were all granted anonymity to speak frankly.

Oil and gas drilling

The U.K. is inching closer to a politically fraught decision on whether to allow oil and gas drilling in two of the North Sea’s last major untapped fields.

An oil rig is seen through the mist on the Cromarty Firth on the north-east coast of Scotland on April 24, 2026. | Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images

The Jackdaw gas field received initial approval in 2022, while the Rosebank oil field was green-lit in 2023. Further consultation due to a legal tussle over their environmental impacts ended in mid-August and Whitehall and industry officials expect a final decision in September. Jackdaw operator Adura has claimed gas could start flowing from Oct. 1. 

Burnham — who pledged to give voters “breathing space” on the cost of living, yet is watching unrest in the Middle East push up energy bills — has spent his summer dropping positive hints about the projects, painting North Sea drilling as a “bridge to a renewable future.” He indicated similarly to Trump, who has repeatedly urged Britain to get drilling.

Yet the Green Party surged in opinion polls earlier this year and almost three quarters of England is in drought, after a summer that is on track to be the U.K.’s hottest on record. 

A person with knowledge of the planning said the North Sea decision, which will be taken on a quasi-judicial basis by Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, is not expected this week. (One senior figure close to Burnham insisted the timing was “definitely not” tied to the optics of the dry summer, despite some MPs suspecting as such.) 

When it does come, the U.S. president is likely to see it as a test of Britain’s priorities. One U.K. official said senior figures in Trump’s administration “really don’t understand” the hesitancy.

Trump Danger Rating: 4/5

Defense spending

Burnham’s new finance minister John Healey quit as Starmer’s defense secretary to demand that military spending accelerates to 3 percent of GDP by 2030 (on the road to hit a Trump-pleasing 3.5 percent by 2035).

Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey plays a game of table tennis on a visit to Kiln Park Holiday Centre on August 27, 2026 in Tenby. | Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

Now he has the job of chancellor, Healey has refused to make that guarantee — and will leave the issue dangling well into next year. Healey will not set a target date for reaching 3 percent in his Oct. 28 budget, a British government official confirmed, and will instead name it as part of a cross-government spending review in 2027.

Conservative opponents seized on Healey’s indecision Friday, arguing he “is backtracking on the very pledge which sealed the fate of the last PM.” Whether Trump will choose to single out Britain is another matter; the president has taken a fairly equal-opportunities approach to berating NATO allies over their spending and many other nations rank below the U.K.

Healey is attending this week’s meeting of G20 finance ministers in the U.S., which could prove an early test of whether the issue is cutting through.

Trump Danger Rating: 3/5

Israeli settlements

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has promised a “comprehensive” U.K. response to Israel’s E1 settlement in the West Bank, risking a confrontation with the U.S. administration.

U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband listens as he meets with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Department of State in Washington on August 5, 2026. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Two officials said Miliband is expected to make a statement to parliament in the next two weeks on the E1 project, which he has branded “unacceptable and destructive.” One senior Labour figure said they expected him to announce sanctions on Israeli settlements, though the Foreign Office has declined to comment on any future action. Miliband is separately due at regular questions in parliament on Tuesday.

His intervention will be fresh for two audiences: UNGA and then the party conference in Liverpool, at which grassroots members call for Labour to go further.

One minister said Burnham would want to “put his stamp” on foreign affairs due to the political salience of the Middle East. The senior Labour figure quoted above argued Miliband should wait six weeks until Knesset elections on Oct. 27, but one of two U.K. officials quoted above said: “They don’t want to go into Labour conference with this hanging around.”

A hostile reaction from Israel is inevitable, but it’s less certain how Trump will respond. The U.K. has consistently gone further than the U.S.; Starmer used UNGA last year to recognize a Palestinian state.

Israeli soldiers arrive at the scene where Israeli settlers occupy a Palestinian building under construction in the village of Qusra, south of the city of Nablus on August 29, 2026. | Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images

Washington recently described a sanctions push by Ireland as “unhelpful” and some Labour MPs told The Times they feared a trade retaliation by Trump. On the other hand, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee issued a warning to West Bank settlers in recent weeks and Britain has safety in numbers; a statement condemning E1 was signed by 20 fellow nations and the European Commission.

Trump Danger Rating: 3/5

Ukraine … and Iran

Burnham picked Ukraine for his first foreign trip, saying it “particularly” affected his intention to travel to UNGA, and will meet French President Emmanuel Macron in London this week. The prime minister is considering a meeting of European and other non-U.S. leaders in the “Coalition of the Willing” to coincide with the New York summit.

The new PM is not trying to be a global fixer like Starmer but he faces the same challenges. Burnham said he wants to help solve Ukraine’s shortage of U.S.-made Patriot missile interceptors, many of which are being hoovered up by the conflict between the U.S. and Iran. 

Britain has little to fear about Trump’s rhetoric or actions against the U.K. itself, but the president’s actions in both volatile conflicts will have knock-on effects for Britain’s economy. One person who works on U.K. foreign policy said civil servants believe “the Ukraine trip was a bit of an awakening” for Burnham, while a U.K. official claimed Burnham’s team “appear a little blindsided” by the scale of the Iran conflict’s impact.

Some Whitehall officials had low expectations that Burnham would attend UNGA — Conservative PM Rishi Sunak skipped the summit in 2023 — until he told reporters last Monday that he was “likely” to go. At that moment the intensity of planning ramped up, said two Whitehall officials.

Supporters and members of the British Indian Ocean territory Chagos Archipelago hold placards and the territory’s flag outside the Houses of Parliament in London on January 7, 2026. | Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images

The story of both wars has been one of Britain and its allies forming coalitions to nudge the U.S. to a more favorable position, with only mixed success and, as yet, no resolution. Britain’s position is not entirely comfortable in the meantime; Burnham has continued a policy (agreed under Starmer) of allowing the U.S. to use British bases to launch “defensive” strikes on Iran.

Trump Danger Rating: 4/5

Chagos Islands

Burnham has inherited a controversial deal, agreed under Starmer, to hand the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius — while leasing back a U.K.-U.S. joint military base on the Indian Ocean archipelago.

The deal was forging ahead with U.S. clearance until Trump began railing against it in February, following lobbying from figures on the British right including the former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Three U.K. government officials said the deal itself — negotiated and backed personally by No. 10 national security adviser Jonathan Powell — is unlikely to change to appease Trump, leaving it in limbo unless the president changes his mind. “If there were easy additional baubles to provide, they would have been found by now,” said one of the three officials.

Yet this hold-up is causing tension with Mauritius, which was due a windfall in the deal and could press the U.K. to move at UNGA. It also affects wider diplomatic relations since the deal is backed by India, whose trade deal with Britain took effect a few weeks ago.

Trump Danger Rating: 2/5

Tech and trade

Burnham has inherited a complex web of deals that Starmer’s government secured (and in some cases, later un-secured) with the U.S.

These include the “economic prosperity deal” announced in May 2025, which secured lower tariffs for the U.K. than some other countries, including on steel and cars. But elements which had been due for negotiation at a later date remain in the ether. Those include the implementation of a U.K.-U.S. deal on pharmaceutical trade, which has implications for NHS spending on drugs (Britain agreed to spend more in order to get the deal over the line).

Less advanced is the “tech prosperity deal” that both sides hailed in 2025 but was then paused by the U.S. administration. Talks over nuclear fusion energy have resumed while separate tracks on AI and quantum co-operation remain stalled.

One U.K. official said talks could continue at an official level with little involvement from Burnham and Trump. “There is more to do” on both the trade deal, which is “imperfect but better than anyone else’s,” they said, while the tech prosperity deal gave a framework to build on. They added: “It’s a different phase of the relationship. It’s less shuttling over to Washington all the time … it’s not the same sort of theater, needing to be in the Oval constantly, in the way that Starmer had to be.”

One stumbling block: the U.K.’s digital services tax, which has drawn Trump’s repeated ire and raised more than £1 billion last year, much of it from U.S. tech firms. A spokesperson for Burnham’s government said “we remain open to discussing U.S. concerns,” but the U.K. has reiterated its commitment to the tax until a multilateral solution can be found.

Another stumbling block: Burnham wants closer ties with the EU ahead of a summit between Brussels and London this fall. British alignment with EU food standards has previously caused tension with the U.S. administration. 

Trump Danger Rating: 3/5

Miliband on the world stage

A wild card in all this is Burnham’s pick for foreign secretary: Ed Miliband.

An outspoken former Labour leader who missed his shot at becoming prime minister in 2015, Miliband had coveted Healey’s job of chancellor. Instead he is set to use the foreign office to press Britain’s economic case on the world stage. That inevitably includes his long-held support of net zero, which rankles some in the U.S. administration.

He has personally taken the U.K.’s seat on the World Bank board, instead of a junior minister, and officials believe he would likely attend New York Climate Week (at the same time as UNGA), along with the COP31 climate summit in November. Trump has a habit of deciding individual politicians are beyond the pale. So far, though, the relationship appears to be functioning well enough; he met U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for 90 minutes of talks in early August in Washington D.C.

Trump Danger Rating: 2/5

Reparations

One summit looms in November without the U.S.: the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), presided over by King Charles III and attended by the U.K. alongside 55 other countries, most of them former colonies.

The location of Antigua and Barbuda means calls for reparations for the slave trade — which dominated the last CHOGM in Samoa — will inevitably come up.

If Burnham were to attend, it would test how a PM who forged his politics campaigning for justice — including for victims of the 1989 Hillsborough stadium crush, and patients given infected blood products in the U.K. — responds to a call that the U.K. government has long said it cannot afford.

It’s not such an issue for Trump, though. The U.S. president might barely notice the summit is happening.

Trump Danger Rating: 1/5

Esther Webber contributed reporting from London.