Burnham traveled to Ukraine to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month. He has since met leaders including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Canada’s Mark Carney and plans to attend November’s COP31 climate summit in Turkey.
A decision looms over whether to attend two other major summits — the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda, attended by his foreign secretary and King Charles III, and the G20 summit in December at the Trump National Doral Miami resort.
Burnham will host G20 leaders next year in Manchester, the city where he spent nine years as mayor, at a cavernous former railway station turned conference center that previously hosted the Manchester bands Oasis and The Smiths.
Throughout his march to Downing Street, senior officials in the Whitehall machine quietly said they never doubted that Burnham would be dragged back to international affairs.
The question is how he explains this to a domestic audience.
Pinning it back to the domestic
So far, Burnham’s Downing Street is taking a similar tack to Starmer’s, especially in his last months: frame every foreign intervention through the lens of reducing the cost of living back home.
The intended message is not subtle. The prime minister’s official spokesperson said Burnham would use the meeting with Trump “to advance U.K. interests,” adding: “The British people at home are at the forefront of the Prime Minister’s mission in New York this week, because to deliver at home, we must ensure we’re leading international efforts to brighten a darkening global picture.”