A fourth person who has worked with Burnham said that might be a plus when it comes to winning the next general election against the insurgent Reform Party. “I know it’s a banal thing, but we’ve not had a northern prime minister for a really long time, unless you count Rishi Sunak,” this person said. (Sunak represented a leafy Yorkshire constituency but is from the south of England.) “It does matter, because every weekend conversation … will be migration, housing, cost of living, dirty high streets, antisocial behaviour. Great — we win on those, we win the country.”
The first person who has worked with Burnham said it is deeper than raw electoral politics. This person said Burnham sees many policy issues through two main lenses — rewiring the economy and bringing communities together.
As such, he is not totally off the world stage. As mayor, he has carved out time in his diary to see diplomats — in part because Manchester has the most consulates of any English city apart from London. And he has been on trade missions to the United States, Japan and Singapore. One person who works with the mayor’s office said another trip is planned for India in the fall.
Leader-level geopolitics will be unavoidable. Burnham would start at square one with U.S. President Donald Trump, whose relationship with Starmer has turned from friendly to frosty. At least he has something in common with Canada’s Mark Carney — they both support Everton Football Club.
Oddly enough, viewing foreign engagement through the lens of economic growth could lead to Burnham’s approach resembling Starmer’s, said the third person quoted above: “I don’t think he is ideological about foreign policy. I think he’s got a set of principles and then his position would be, what’s in the interests of the rest of the U.K.?”
The focus on the economy extends to areas such as defense. While Burnham floated the idea of borrowing outside the U.K.’s fiscal rules to find a boost in defense spending — a position his team walked back this week — he has not set out an overarching defense vision. A fifth person who has worked with the mayor predicted Burnham would see defense through the lens of “an industrial opportunity” for investment, rather than geopolitics.