{"id":90706,"date":"2026-07-26T16:41:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T16:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/90706\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T16:41:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T16:41:14","slug":"uks-burnham-would-call-out-trump-if-in-britains-interest-he-tells-bbc-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/90706\/","title":{"rendered":"UK’s Burnham would call out Trump if in Britain’s interest, he tells BBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

New PM says leaders must defend national interest; he rules out an early general election before 2029<\/p>\n

Published Sun, Jul 26, 2026 \u00b7 09:21 PM<\/p>\n

[LONDON] Britain\u2019s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham \u201cwill always put Britain\u2019s interests first\u201d, he told the BBC in an interview when asked whether he was willing to call out U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Burnham\u2019s predecessor Keir Starmer, who announced he was stepping down last month, had a fraught relationship with Trump due to differences over the US-Israeli \u2060war on Iran, immigration, energy and tech regulation.<\/p>\n

While Trump initially described Starmer\u2019s successor as \u201cextremely liberal\u201d, he said last week he had a \u201cvery good conversation\u201d with Burnham, who became Britain\u2019s seventh prime minister in a decade on Monday (Jul 20).<\/p>\n

In his first major interview since taking office, parts of which were released on Sunday, BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg asked Burnham if he was willing to call out Trump if he thought it was the right thing to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll leaders have to do that. You have to defend your own national interest before anything else. That\u2019s what you\u2019re required to do if you\u2019re to do this job properly,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

The prime minister also said that he would not call a general election before 2029. \u201cI\u2019m going to rule it out. Yeah, there\u2019s no early general election. I don\u2019t think people want it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On Britain\u2019s national defence, Burnham said that he was \u201cabsolutely committed\u201d to what was promised to Nato partners. London has pledged to spend 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product on defence by 2035, in line with a new Nato target.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to work out the way of doing that,\u201d he said. \u201cThe first challenge … is to ensure that the defence investment plan is fully funded, and that\u2019s the thing that\u2019s right in front of us, and we need to work that through as we go towards the Budget later this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burnham\u2019s newly appointed chancellor of the exchequer John Healey resigned as defence minister in the previous government after saying that, unless a commitment was made to spend 3 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030, Britain would not be safe.<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a><\/p>\n

Burnham did not commit to the 2030 target in the interview.<\/p>\n

When asked on Sunday, Wes Streeting, who was appointed defence secretary by Burnham last week, noted that any timetable for increasing defence spending was the decision of the finance minister.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s for the chancellor to set out, both at the Budget and future spending reviews, how we will achieve 3.5 per cent by 2035,\u201d he told Sky News.<\/p>\n

The full interview with Burnham will air on the BBC\u2019s Panorama programme on Monday. REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New PM says leaders must defend national interest; he rules out an early general election before 2029 Published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7786,361,2016,5,6],"class_list":["post-90706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-andy-burnham","tag-donald-trump","tag-nato","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116987277256463456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}