Trump says first call with new UK PM Burnham went 'very well,' pledges US support

Andy Burnham as Prime Minister is not a sentence anyone expected to write a few years ago, and yet here we are, with Trump on the phone congratulating him and calling the conversation "very well." That phrase does a lot of work. It tells you Trump is playing this smart rather than personal. Burnham built a career being one of the more openly skeptical voices on American-style economics and foreign policy inside Labour, and Trump could have used the call to needle him about that. He didn't. He talked trade, the alliance, and Middle East security, which is exactly the list you want two leaders discussing in their first conversation instead of settling old scores.

That restraint matters more than the headline suggests. The special relationship survives changes in government on both sides only when the leaders involved decide it's bigger than their disagreements. Reagan and Thatcher didn't agree on everything either, but they understood the alliance was a strategic asset, not a personality contest. If Trump is extending that same logic to a Labour PM whose politics he has little in common with, that's a point in his favor, not a concession.

Where we'd push back is on the assumption that "went well" means much yet. A first call is diplomacy at its easiest, all goodwill and no decisions. The real test comes when trade negotiators start haggling over specifics, or when the next Middle East flare-up forces London and Washington to actually coordinate rather than just talk about coordinating. Burnham's instincts on foreign policy have leaned toward caution and multilateral hand-wringing. Trump's instincts run the other way. That gap doesn't close because a phone call went smoothly.

Still, starting on good terms beats starting on bad ones, and Trump seems to know it. Americans should want this relationship to work regardless of who's sitting in Downing Street, because Britain matters to our interests whether or not its prime minister shares our politics. The early signs here are fine. Now let's see if they hold once something actually has to get done.