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As PM-in-waiting Andy Burnham mulls over his options for cabinet, Simon Marks considers who has what it takes to take on European heavyweights and maintain the US-UK 'special relationship'. Listener Tony suggest Keir Starmer himself has the qualifications to step into the role of Foreign Secretary... but points out he might not be 'so keen' to take it on under a Burnham administration. Simon and Republican Overseas chairman Greg Swenson also discuss whether past tweets from Andy Burnham about President Trump will put a strain on their relationship before it even begins. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #simonmarks #donaldtrump #trump #foreignpolicy #keirstarmer #ukpolitics #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
It did not take long, did it, for President Trump to proffer his first Oval Office kicking in the direction of Andy Burnham
0:08
I hear he's extremely liberal, extremely. So that means he probably won't open up the North Sea
0:15
You know, I gave Keir Starmer some pretty good advice. I said, open up the North Sea
0:22
And then we were off on the familiar storyline that if only Sir Keir Starmer had listened to him
0:27
allowed drilling in the North Sea, sealed off Britain's borders, he wouldn't be about to depart
0:33
number 10. There was even a point in which Donald Trump claimed entirely falsely that he had helped
0:39
nudge Starmer out of office, which is very similar to his entirely false claim that he was responsible
0:45
for the Brexit result 10 years ago. It's all sort of Walter Mitty stuff. He's always the hero of his
0:51
own story. But his comments yesterday do raise a big question. What kind of foreign policy should
0:59
Andy Burnham pursue? Because we've got a few clues and hints about where he wants to take the country
1:04
in domestic terms. More money on defence, a big push of resources to the regions, bringing public
1:10
transport, energy and water companies back towards public ownership. But on foreign policy, we don't
1:16
know very much. And to be fair to Mr. Burnham, as mayor of Greater Manchester, he did lead trade
1:22
delegations overseas, but he wasn't required to take much of a stance on the major international
1:27
issues that he will soon be confronting. Although he did take a stand on January the 6th, 2021
1:36
after Donald Trump's supporters engaged in their deadly riot on Capitol Hill, Mr. Burnham took to
1:43
Twitter writing, any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now
1:53
Now Andy Burnham is going to be the politician in the UK who will have to decide whether he's
1:59
going to give Donald Trump the time of day. How do you want him to handle the American president
2:04
More of a softly, softly approach like that adopted by Sakia? Or do you want him to go full
2:09
Georgia Maloney? Tear up the playbook. See what happens if we actually try
2:13
taking a tougher line. And more broadly, on other issues, how should
2:17
he handle Europe the Middle East Iran Ukraine We spent a lot of time talking about his pick for number 11 Downing Street the next chancellor But who do you want him to appoint as foreign
2:29
secretary? Because it seems unlikely that Andy Burnham wants to follow in Zakir's footsteps
2:34
and basically do that job himself. Your views this hour on where Andy Burnham takes Britain
2:40
in the world and who he puts in charge of steering those policies. Should he keep Yvette
2:45
Cooper in post. Think about bringing David Miliband back to run things, perhaps from the
2:51
House of Lords. Who is your pick to head the Foreign Office back to the very busy Bethany
2:58
Dawson, LBC's political correspondent? Bethany, before we go back, just for updates on Mike Tapp
3:04
on this issue of Andy Burnham foreign policy, he's a bit of a blank page, not an entirely blank page
3:12
Do we have any indication of what kind of direction he is likely to take
3:16
The issue is, to a lot of questions about policy, the answer with Andy Burnham at the moment is we don't know
3:23
especially, though, when it comes to kind of international issues. When he was in government, he had incredibly domestic briefs
3:30
and in his brief of Mayor of Greater Manchester, of course, that was very domestic
3:34
So he is currently kind of really building this international brief. But what he's going to do on things like international aid, we don't know
3:44
In terms of things like how he will handle Ukraine, indeed the war in the Middle East or wars in the Middle East, we just don't know
3:52
And what about Foreign Secretary? Where do you think that's heading? I would love to say something different than I don't know, I'm afraid
3:58
You know, I asked around today and lots of names were lobbed at me, which I was very grateful for
4:04
but it was kind of agreed that everyone suggesting a name was kind of playing fantasy cabinet here
4:09
It was not that anybody had any inkling there are a lot of very talented people that would do a good job
4:15
However, who exactly it will be is still all up in the air. Tony's texted in to say
4:21
Kasekia Starmer should be foreign secretary, but says Tony, I'm guessing that he might not be that keen on the idea
4:28
I don't know, Tony. I think he might be very keen on the idea, theoretically, Whether he'd be keen on the idea in a Burnham administration, I'm not entirely sure
4:37
Also joining me on the programme this evening I delighted to welcome Greg Swenson to the programme the chair of Republicans Overseas UK Mr Swenson thanks very much indeed for joining us on the program So we found this ancient posting on
4:53
social media dating back to January the 6th, 2021 from Andy Burnham, indicating that he thought that
5:00
anybody, any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now. Is that going
5:07
to constrain not only Andy Burnham, but the nature of his relationship with the U.S. president
5:13
Good evening to you. Good evening. It's nice to be with you. I don't think it will. You know
5:18
look, there's no shortage of people who are on record of saying nasty things about the president
5:23
You know, you also had a lot of old tweets come up during the Henry Nowak situation a few weeks ago
5:29
of people who piled on to the to the George Floyd bandwagon, but yet didn't want to make the same
5:35
sort of comments about Henry Nowak. So, you know, look, I don't think that will hurt the relationship
5:40
with the president, because just about everybody on the left had similar criticisms in social media
5:47
So I don't think so. OK, but Greg, when you heard what the president said yesterday about Andy
5:52
Burnham, he's extreme. He's been the mayor of a town. I mean, as though, you know, Manchester is
5:57
like Poughkeepsie, which clearly it isn't. And he's very unlikely to approve drilling in the North
6:03
Sea. I mean, actually, we all know that Andy Burnham is quite likely to approve drilling in
6:08
the North Sea. Nonetheless, unless he seals the country's borders, he's not going to meet the
6:15
Trump mark, is he? I don't think so. I don't think you could expect anyone in Labour or
6:20
you know, parties of the left to meet that. And I understand that there's political differences
6:25
We have a Republican government, you know, right now and in the UK, it's a Labour government. So
6:30
I don't think anyone should be surprised that, you know, that Andy Burnham won't line up
6:35
you know, 100% with the president's playbook. But I do think that at least liberating the energy sector to a certain degree will definitely
6:44
win some favor with him. I don't think there's any doubt about that
6:48
I think maybe even digging for natural gas would be useful. So I think, you know, the president is very fond of the UK
6:55
And that's something that, you know, we've seen in both terms. And I think that he criticizes, yes
7:02
he very unfiltered that way but he actually does care He cares about mass migration He cares about the energy sector because he sees UK businesses paying four times for energy that we pay here in
7:14
the US. And so, you know, that's troubling to the president. It also shows you that
7:18
you know, we had similar problems four years ago. We had hostility to the private sector in general
7:24
but especially to energy. We had, you know, we had censorship and collaboration of censorship
7:30
between the social media companies and the White House. We've had all these similar issues
7:35
and we're able to fix them in a very short amount of time
7:40
So I just, I think what the president's trying to communicate, and you heard this from Sarah Rogers yesterday
7:44
at the ARC conference as well, is that these are all problems
7:48
that we've experienced here in the US. So those criticisms aren't made
7:52
from some point of like snobbery, like we're so good here and we got everything right
7:57
You know, we didn't, But the president was able to fix a lot of these challenges
8:01
And he's done that in just, you know, the year and a half that he's been in office
8:05
And Greg, just briefly, with regard to the Trump administration's national security strategy
8:10
it specifically says that the only place it finds optimism in Europe is in the rise of patriotic European political parties
8:21
And by that, the Trump administration clearly does not mean Labour. No, that's pretty sure. That's pretty clear in the strategy. And there's definitely a pivot from Western Europe to the Gulf region, from Western Europe to the Pacific
8:38
But I do think that he is pretty clear about the fact that the parties of the right, the more populous parties, are doing well
8:46
They're not necessarily leading governments right now, with the exception being in Italy
8:52
And so I think he has great hopes for Western Europe, but I'm not sure he's that confident that it will work
9:00
And we'll see. There's always 2029 in the UK. Greg Swenson, thanks very much indeed for being on the program tonight
9:06
Greg Swenson is the chair of Republicans Overseas UK. And of course, when we say that Donald Trump is not particularly interested in forging a positive relationship more broadly with Labour
9:18
that's because he really is interested in trying to create a situation in which either
9:23
Nigel Farage or Rupert Lowe or maybe a coalition of the two of them end up in government
9:28
to replace Andy Burnham
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