Donald Trump provides first evaluation of Andy Burnham and trace at way forward for the Special Relationship

Trump was asked about the potential successor to Keir Starmer during a Q&A session in the Oval Office – and it could give a hint at what’s to come in the Special Relationship

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Donald Trump gave his first assessment of Andy Burnham today – and he didn’t appear hopeful.

Trump was asked about the potential successor to Keir Starmer during a Q&A session in the Oval Office – and it could give a hint at what’s to come in the Special Relationship.

“I don’t know anything,” he admitted. “I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town. I hear he’s extremely liberal – extremely. So I guess he won’t open up the North Sea.”

Trump has frequently moaned about the UK’s decision to halt licences to drill in the North Sea for a number of reasons. Restarting drilling would almost certainly benefit American companies bidding for licences. But another major factor is his decades-long vendetta against wind farms, which stems from the Scottish government erecting turbines off the coast of Aberdeen next to his luxury golf course.

Trump went on: “You know, I gave Keir Starmer some pretty good advice, I said “Open up the North Sea”. I said “go to Aberdeen which is the hottest city in the whole continent, it was the oil city, it was the oil of Europe. It was terrible.” Asked whether he’d like to be among the first on his list for a visit from Burnham, assuming he is, in fact, the next Prime Minister, Trump said: “No. But I think we’re of a different persuasion. He’s very liberal.” He then started banging on about how great it would be if American companies could hoover up British oil.

He said: “You know I got along well with Starmer, I disagreed with Starmer, but I said you have two problems, immigration and energy. And crime, too by the way. You have the greatest oil field in the world, one of them. It’s called the North Sea Oil. All you have to do is bid it out to Exon, Chevron, Shell, British Petroleum. They’re begging to go there and are willing to pay billions of dollars. But because the left is so crazy they don’t want the money.”