A non-exhaustive list of Trump’s recent foreign policy achievements is a good reminder of just how swiftly he has destroyed what is rosily described as the “rules-based international order”. Since taking office in 2025, he has installed loyalists in key positions, flirted with the idea of withdrawing from Nato, abolished USAID, gutted the US state department, threatened to acquire Greenland “by any means necessary”, captured the president of Venezuela and recast foreign policy as a brutal means of putting “America first”. His administration’s national security strategy, published in December 2025, was described by one former Pentagon official as a “manifesto for the global far right”. It declared that Europe faces the “stark prospect of civilizational erasure” (echoing the far-right conspiracy of a “Great Replacement”) and said that America would encourage the promotion of “patriotic European parties”.
Despite this, western leaders have taken a while to adjust to the second Trump presidency. “Starmer got quite a lot of criticism for being obsequious to Trump,” Pippa tells me. His reverence was on full display when he placated Trump with a royal visit that included a dinner-party seat next to the Princess of Wales, and when he struck a controversial trade deal that will force the NHS to spend more on US-branded drugs (the deal, for which the US agreed not to put tariffs on British pharmaceutical exports, could cost the NHS as much as £44.7bn by 2030, my colleague Aditya Chakrabortty reported in June).
Starmer’s stance gradually toughened as he realised that placating Trump was no guarantee of protection. Later in his premiership, he refused to let Trump use UK military bases in America’s initial strikes on Iran. “But he was seen by some inside the government as being too flattering and fawning,” says Pippa.
What’s changed?
On the surface, not much. Within hours of arriving at the UN, Trump managed to alienate just about everyone, telling a journalist from CNN, one of the three networks he’s banned from the White House, “you should not be here covering me,” openly contemplating the annihilation of Iran, a UN member state, taking a shot at Cuba and attacking the UN for “imposing a radical left-wing agenda”.
Burnham, meanwhile, wasn’t that different in tone from Starmer. He shook Trump’s hand, forgave him for once describing him as the mayor of a town, made the obligatory noises about loving the US, and appeared to nod along while Trump excoriated the Chagos Island deal (Starmer’s proposal to give Mauritius sovereignty over the island on the condition that the UK can continue to operate the Diego Garcia military base there). “Our understanding is that Downing Street is sticking to the Chagos deal,” Pippa tells me.
Even so, Burnham has said he wants to take a different approach to US relations, suggesting in June that he wouldn’t just “go along with anything they say”. The clearest sign of this intention was the sweeping sanctions that Ed Miliband imposed on trade with Israeli settlements earlier this month. At yesterday’s meeting, a journalist asked Trump what he thought about the decision. Trump didn’t take the bait, and instead deferred to Burnham.
“It was an unusual show of reticence,” Pippa says. It seemed like a vindication of the careful diplomatic work that took place over the summer, when Miliband and diplomats at the Foreign Office formed a 12-nation coalition to back the policy. Perhaps it will give them confidence that it’s possible to make a principled stand without suffering severe repercussions.
What were the flashpoints?
“It’s impossible to get away from the fact that despite the cordial relations, there are some really thorny issues coming up,” Pippa says. One of those is Iran. Burnham told journalists on the plane to New York that he would be pushing Trump to de-escalate the conflict (Trump said yesterday that he’d strike a deal with Iran after the midterm elections, which seems highly unlikely). Britain has longstanding diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, and Burnham recently agreed that Britain would help refuel Saudi jets that are defending energy infrastructure against Houthi rebels. With this decision, he’s treading a fine line between assisting a regional ally, and getting drawn into a wider conflict.
In his speech at the general assembly, Burnham announced he would be launching a new international centre to establish global standards on AI. It’s unclear whether he’ll go as far as nations such as Norway and Finland in backing legislation to prevent the launch of new AI models that haven’t undergone rigorous safety testing, something that ministers in Starmer’s government were previously exploring. In any case, his speech on AI put him firmly at odds with Trump, who described attempts to regulate AI as a “globalist scheme”, and declared that from now on, his administration will now be referring to AI as SI: Super Intelligence.
What should Burnham do next?
As the Trump administration has helped to erode old alliances like Nato and the G7, new and temporary alliances have emerged, including the nations that Miliband convinced to back his West Bank sanctions. In a speech at Davos earlier this year, Canada’s Mark Carney spoke of a “rupture in the world order” and called for the world’s democratic “middle powers” to come together to build alliances based on shared values.
“Burnham doesn’t want to take the Carney approach of all-out diplomatic war with the US, because the US is still our biggest security and economic ally,” Pippa tells me. “But we live in a world of spheres of influence – the US, China, and the EU – and that means having to make decisions about which sphere we want to belong to, whether geographically, or ethically.”
As the Guardian contributor Steve Bloomfield recently wrote in this interesting piece, the idea of foreign policy with an “ethical dimension” of the sort once espoused by the Labour foreign secretary Robin Cook has often been regarded as something of a joke. But in a battle between liberal democracies and an authoritarian far right, demonstrating an alternative to the cruelty and belligerence of the Trump administration is arguably more important than ever. Miliband’s sanctions announcement is a promising start, but nobody knows yet how far Burnham will be willing to go.
At the UN general assembly Donald Trump threatened to ‘annihilate’ Iran, while also underscoring US policy on Cuba, Mexico, Greenland and AI. Photograph: Stefan Jeremiah/AP
