Burnham to Meet Trump for the First Time at Next Week's UN Assembly
Downing Street’s New York planning firmed into news: the Prime Minister will meet President Trump for the first time at the UN General Assembly — two leaders who have traded years of long-distance disdain, now obliged to transact over Ukraine, the Gulf war that sets British energy bills, and an Israel policy Washington has publicly deplored. They have spoken by phone; they have never shared a room.
The meeting’s agenda is the easy part — interceptors, Hormuz, trade — the relationship is the hard one: Mr Burnham built his politics partly in opposition to everything the president represents, said so repeatedly when it was cheap, and now needs American cooperation on every file that touches British households, a conversion every predecessor has undergone and none has enjoyed. The president’s recent form adds live hazards: a fortnight of united-Ireland endorsements and Falklands doubts means the encounter carries constitutional tripwires no briefing book fully defuses. The choreography will be studied for warmth the way Kremlinologists once studied podiums. Watch the readout’s length and the body language photographs — and whether Ulster comes up, in either direction.