Burnham inherits a relationship with the EU hampered by Brexit and friction with Trump

Andy Burnham has so far displayed that he has a keen political instinct. His priority, as he has made clear, will be domestic politics, and the few clues he has given about his international strategy suggest he will not deviate much from the course set by his predecessor, Keir Starmer. But even before setting foot in Downing Street on Monday, he had already made a splash on the issue that caused a level of anxiety and distrust among Labour members and voters unseen in recent years.

The party’s most progressive wing was deeply frustrated by Starmer’s tepid initial reaction to Israel’s offensive in Gaza. The then-prime minister went so far as to justify Benjamin Netanyahu’s government cutting off water and electricity to the Strip as a pressure tactic.

“I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza my party didn’t get it right and I am sorry about that. The response has too often not been good enough. We need to do better,” Burnham said, in a full reversal of Starmer’s policy. “We’ve got to do more to put pressure on the Israeli government [...] The UK was too slow to call for a ceasefire,” he acknowledged.

But this first statement on such a thorny issue also revealed that the new UK prime minister is more calculating than he appears. He has consistently avoided calling what happened in Palestine a genocide, limiting himself to talking about “war crimes” and leaving the legal definition of the conflict to international courts.

Relations with Europe

Something similar could happen with relations between the UK and Europe. Brussels unilaterally decided to postpone the bilateral summit scheduled for July 22, just after Starmer announced his resignation. There is still no set date for that meeting, where progress had been expected on matters such as youth mobility and the relaxation of phytosanitary customs checks. Nothing especially ambitious, but it responded to the priority set by the British government, which, albeit belatedly, understood that the only way to revive a sluggish economy was to push for closer ties with its main trading partner.

Burnham, who until recently openly favored the UK rejoining the EU in the future, has now chosen, like his predecessor, to shelve the issue. He barely mentioned it during the Makerfield by-election campaign, where he ran to win the parliamentary seat that later allowed him to contest the Labour Party leadership and unseat Starmer. And, like Starmer, he has tied his decisions on Europe to the red lines of the 2024 election manifesto: no to the common customs territory, no to a return to the single market, and no to free movement of people.

“I want to consolidate the progress made on the existing UK-EU negotiations and make further progress quickly, including by strengthening our co-operation on illegal migration [Burnham prefers the term ‘illegal’ to the ‘irregular’ used by humanitarian institutions], economic security and the broader resilience of our societies to external threats — from terrorism to AI-driven disinformation,” Burnham wrote last week in an opinion piece for the newspaper The Times.

By ignoring in his piece matters such as access for EU university students to British universities with the same tuition fees as UK students (a Brussels demand), youth mobility, or even greater regulatory alignment with the European Union (“dynamic alignment,” as Starmer’s team called it), Burnham returns to the starting point of two years ago, when Starmer’s main preoccupation on Europe was strengthening cooperation on security and border control.

“The EU has more interest in securing the UK as a security ally than as an economic partner. And it is already clear that the Labour government is trapped by its ‘red lines,’ which means the European Commission has little appetite to favor greater economic integration in many areas,” writes Joël Reland, senior researcher at the think tank UK in a Changing Europe.

Burnham’s team may devote more effort to securing the UK’s final access to the EU SAFE defense investment program — pressed like other European countries to increase military budgets — than to accelerating mobility for young Europeans and EU citizens.

Ukraine and Trump

Burnham inherits a firmly established position of unconditional support for Ukraine against Russian aggression. Boris Johnson started it and Starmer consolidated it; Starmer’s last visit as prime minister was to Kyiv, to say goodbye and receive the tribute of his friend Volodymyr Zelenskiy. His successor will not change that policy, and everything suggests that, if he prioritizes specific meetings, a meeting with the Ukrainian president and another with NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte would top the agenda.

Ahead lie the United Nations General Assembly in September, a meeting of the European Political Community in Dublin a month later, COP31 in Turkey and a G-20 meeting. If Burnham decides to send the foreign secretary to some of those events instead of attending himself, he will make clear his political priorities for the first 100 days.

Finally, the big question will be how he handles the traditional “special relationship” with the United States. Starmer — despite the final rift with Donald Trump over the then-prime minister’s refusal to take part in an offensive against Iran or to allow the U.S. military to use UK bases — knew how to handle the Republican president. He flattered him with official visits and pompous ceremonies alongside King Charles III and Queen Camilla, and managed to calm him when he flew into a rage at Zelenskiy and wanted to walk away from Ukraine.

Burnham’s first courtesy call to a foreign leader upon entering Downing Street was to the U.S. president. Trump had already made clear his apprehension about the arrival of a new prime minister who was “too liberal” (MAGA jargon for saying someone is too far to the left for his tastes), but Burnham knows, as Starmer did, that personal treatment is key when dealing with such an unpredictable figure.

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