Andy Burnham’s foreign challenge

The next prime minister has defining choices to make on the US, China and Europe

(Fly of Swallow Studio/Shutterstock)

Andy Burnham is going to be prime minister; the only political question left is when. But policy-wise there are still question marks over everything. Nowhere more so than on foreign policy, which has hardly featured in media interviews, even as “one last question, Mr Mayor!” Bizarrely, after two years in which Labour has been overwhelmed by geopolitics, the SW1 ecosystem has turned peculiarly insular, as if the burning issues of the winter will be devolution and the triple lock rather than Trump, Ukraine and chaos in the Middle East. This is what Burnham should be thinking about as he prepares for No 10.

The politics of foreign policy

It’s actually quite simple why Burnham is about to be prime minister and Keir Starmer is not. He’s got more of a feel for the politics of the Labour Party – how to speak to it and how to tell a story about his insurgency to the media. But the politics of foreign affairs is an art in itself. There is little time and there are two looming bear traps that could derail matters.