What has Andy Burnham, Britain’s likely next prime minister, said about President Trump?

London — Labour Party lawmaker Andy Burnham, who looks increasingly likely to be Britain’s next prime minister, has previously criticized President Trump, accusing the American leader of bringing “instability” to the world. 

Current Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Monday that he would resign in the wake of disastrous local elections in May, and 20 resignations from his government. 

As his Labour Party still has a large majority of seats in the U.K. parliament — won in the last national elections in 2024 — it gets to pick Starmer’s replacement, and Burnham is widely expected to get the job.

If that happens as expected in the coming weeks, Burnham will, sooner or later, find himself on the phone with Mr. Trump, whose advisers will likely have scoured years of news articles for evidence of Burnham’s views on the businessman-turned-politician.

So what has Burnham said about Mr. Trump?

“A polarized, poisonous politics”

In short, he has not been particularly complimentary. 

“The path we’re on, if we are not careful, is a path towards the politics of the United States of America,” Burnham warned on the campaign trail in June. While he didn’t attribute it directly to President Trump, he said Americans were grappling with “a polarized, poisonous politics where people in communities don’t work together anymore.”

Last year, in an interview with The London Economic that included questions about Mr. Trump’s reelection and the rise of right-wing, populist parties in Europe, he said: “I think we now have to have a real debate about what that means and the instability that [former prime minister] Liz Truss brought to Britain, I think Trump is bringing to the U.S. and the world.”

In a 2024 book that he co-authored, Burnham wrote: “Whether we like it or not, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage have been effective in connecting with people who feel politicians have neglected the place where they live.”

He said a “new radical Right” in the U.K. and U.S. were capitalizing on inequality and an “out-of-touch left-progressive establishment” that had failed to solve problems for middle class voters.

And on Jan. 6, 2021, as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Burnham posted on X: “Any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now.”

When asked about Burnham’s previous comments about Mr. Trump on Tuesday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told CBS News: “Left-wing policies of unfettered migration and destructive globalism have made once-great European cities unrecognizable – allowing criminals to run wild and antisemitism to thrive. President Trump saved the United States from such destruction when he was elected, and he has rightfully warned other world leaders that western civilization will continue to erode if they don’t quickly reverse course.”