British aides call first Trump meeting ‘top end of expectations’
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham met US President Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week in their first face-to-face talks. According to The Guardian’s analysis, Trump deployed a familiar playbook he uses when meeting other world leaders, combining personal flattery, transactional diplomacy and a public evaluation of his guest’s skills. Trump called Burnham a “natural businessperson” who had “lots of assets on his side” and predicted the prime minister would be a “great” leader.
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and national security adviser Jonathan Powell accompanied Burnham to the meeting. British officials — even those who had previously witnessed Trump’s approach and knew the early cordiality would not necessarily hold — expressed relief that the president kept his policy differences with the UK largely muted.
“It was the top end of our expectations,” one British official said afterward. “All the issues you guys had written about – the Falklands, a united Ireland, Chagos – all fine.”
The Guardian, reporting from New York, noted that Trump’s first-meeting playbook had worked on Burnham as it had on previous British prime ministers. When Keir Starmer first met Trump at the White House early in 2025, Trump praised his “beautiful” accent, called Britain a “wonderful” place and claimed to have driven a “hard bargain” on tariffs. On the flight home, the then-prime minister gave reporters a thumbs-up and said he was “happy.” Their relationship subsequently fell apart.
On the issue that fully ruptured the Starmer-Trump relationship — the UK’s refusal to allow the US to use British airbases for attacks against Iran at the start of the war — Trump held his punches. “Some countries could have stepped forward. But there aren’t too many countries, frankly, that could have handled that,” he said.
Trump did criticise one element of UK policy, calling the Chagos deal “terrible.” On the West Bank settlement trade ban, the issue British officials said had worried them most, Trump deferred to Burnham after a summer of diplomacy secured his acquiescence.
“It was a bit of a curveball, but it was better than him criticising it,” another aide said of Trump’s posture on West Bank policy.
Burnham used his post-meeting appearance to describe hopes of ending the political turbulence that has gripped Britain for more than a decade and creating a more “positive story” for the country. “More than anything, we just needed them to connect, and start building a relationship that we can leverage when we need to,” a third government official said.
The Guardian reported that one of Burnham’s senior aides had warned the prime minister on the flight to New York that meeting Trump would be the political equivalent of white water rafting. While there is a well-known playbook Trump deploys when he first meets other world leaders, the newspaper noted, he remains a deeply unpredictable figure and any dealings with him can leave you crashing into the rocks. The prime minister may have survived the first set of diplomatic rapids, the newspaper reported, but Trump’s international actions have previously caused ripples in the UK and further difficulties lay ahead.