The telephone call between British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and US President Donald Trump, which took place on Monday, was reported by Reuters and the British media, referred to by the TASR news agency. For the prime minister of the British government, it was one of the first contacts with a foreign leader after taking office.

• British Prime Minister Andy Burnham spoke on the phone with US President Donald Trump on Monday.
• During the call, Burnham invited Donald Trump to visit Manchester, Britain.
• Trump has publicly backed Burnham’s plans to accelerate North Sea oil exploration.
• Trump described the North Sea as a huge, high-quality and largely undiscovered oil resource.
• Andy Burnham has repeatedly criticized Donald Trump and polarized American politics in the past.

The content of the interview was not published immediately after it took place. However, according to Politico magazine, Burnham also used the phone call to invite Trump to visit Manchester. The new prime minister led the administration of Greater Manchester for more than nine years and earned the nickname “King of the North” in British politics.

Trump and the North Sea

Trump already commented on Burnham in June, when he told reporters that he had heard the British politician was “extremely liberal.” But over the weekend on his Truth Social platform, he praised Burnham’s plans to speed up exploration for oil and gas deposits in parts of the North Sea where licenses already exist.

In the post, he emphasized that, according to him, the North Sea is one of the largest sources of high-quality oil in the world, it has hundreds of years of production ahead of it, and its reserves are said to be largely still undiscovered. He also claimed that harnessing this potential could, in his opinion, transform the United Kingdom from a country struggling with poverty into one of the richest countries in the world.

Past criticism of Trump

Burnham has repeatedly criticized the current head of the White House in the past. He did so, for example, after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when he defended himself against Trump.

During the June election campaign, Burnham was also critical of American politics as such, which he described as highly polarized and, in his words, “poisonous.”